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.

This "architectural license" agreement has been the cornerstone of the partnership that has kept Android smartphones humming with Qualcomm's cutting-edge processors for years. Now, according to