Why does Qualcomm need a license to design a custom ARM chip in the first place? Assuming they're not reusing or deriving from licensed IP blocks, and that they just cracked open a reference book and implemented the instruction set from scratch. Does ARM hold a copyright on the instruction set itself? Can you even copyright an instruction set? Or is it a bunch of patents?
"Snapdragon X Elite" is based on the IP Qualcomm gained from the Acquisition of Nuvia, who developed this IP based on a very narrow license they got from ARM to develop for the server market.
Qualcomm is trying to transfer everything Nuvia has developed under that specific narrow ARM-license to the broad license of Qualcomm and use it for "powering flagship smartphones, next-generation laptops, and digital cockpits, as well as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, extended reality and infrastructure networking solutions"
ARM has filed a lawsuit that this was never in scope of the license of Nuvia, the court-ruling is still pending on that one...
Some generations back Qualcomm took the ARM design-license, designed their own CPU-cores based on it and added their custom GPU, DSP, etc.
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Scorpion, Krait (32bit): Custom Qualcomm designs with full compatibility to ARM's instruction sets. They were the best in the business, knowing more about tailoring an ARM-core to a mobile use-case than any company in the world.
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Then Apple disrupted the space with a 64bit ARM CPU. Qualcomm had to move fast from 32bit to 64bit to respond (why? ...that's arguable)
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Kryo (64bit): To move from 32bit to 64bit within one year (!), Qualcomm adopted the available ARM 64bit design, added their IP for adjacent components and created the first Kryo CPU (SD820, mamma mia what a bad SoC that was...). Over time they applied more customization to that platform, but the base was always this Kryo-architecture (-> newer vanilla ARM-design + Qualcomm modifications)
For years, this approach was used now, including Snapdragon 8cx (modified ARM Cortex-X1 + Cortex-A78 + Qualcomm IP)
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Oryon (64bit): Snapdragon X Elite is now Nuvia's modifications made on top of ARM's design, combined with Qualcomm's IP & modifications. So instead of being an iteration of the previous Qualcomm Kryo-based generation (applying Qualcomm's modifications onto a newer vanilla ARM-design), Qualcomm obviously applied their modifications on top of Nuvia's Design.
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So (over)simplified: Qualcomm did the same as they did before on Kryo, but replaced the foundation with an already-modified ARM-design from the Nuvia team (I don't want to play down the effort Qualcomm took for that, for sure the Nuvia team they acquired had a huge amount of work to merge their design with Qualcomm's modifications. But overall, they put their customization-process on top of the Nuvia-output instead of the ARM-output)
ARM's lawsuit is now obviously also about Qualcomm assuming that they don't need to license a new core-design from ARM because they acquired Nuvia, which achieves a comparable result using an older ARM-design.
Large portions of the Nuvia team were ex Apple A- and M-series silicon designers and builders, presumably the Snapdragon X Elite used some of the cross pollinated ideas originating from apple silicon.
Maybe not exact duplicate, but the ideas cross polinated.
I think the same applies to ARM's newer designs as well, with ARM Blackhawk and Cortex-X series achieving similar results as Nuvia's design.
My guess is that the work Nuvia did happened in close exchange with ARM, with each party owning their respective IP for commercialization (ARM for new generic designs, Nuvia for new server-centric designs).
