Qualcomm's massive Snapdragon chip empire could be under threat with Arm Holdings PLC killing their partnership with the firm.

It's the former that Qualcomm has done with Snapdragon X, so the licence cancellation would apply to custom CPU designs, but not to other Qualcomm chips based on Arm CPU core designs. In other words, the cancellation wouldn't mean that Qualcomm couldn't produce any Arm chips at all, just Arm chips with its own in-house CPU core designs.

PCs with Intel and AMD processors also qualify as Copilot+ certified, so any failure to resolve the dispute, or defeat for Qualcomm, won’t disrupt AI capabilities from appearing in Windows laptops, but the Oryon core is also used in high-end smartphones and tablets due for release in the coming weeks.