[HN Gopher] Apple makes up less than 5% of Arm's revenue, and Ar...
___________________________________________________________________
Apple makes up less than 5% of Arm's revenue, and Arm can't do
anything about it
Author : CharlesW
Score : 33 points
Date : 2023-11-29 16:41 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (9to5mac.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (9to5mac.com)
| greatgib wrote:
| This is not really true in my opinion. Arm could innovate and
| create some additional IP that would be needed by Apple. I don't
| think that Apple could have a contract forcing such a low fee for
| everything they could be created by Arm.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| All ARM advancements since ARMv8 come _FROM_ apple. How do you
| think it happens that anytime ARMv8.X is announced, apple
| announces "and our phones from 2 years ago and on support
| ARMv8.X"?
|
| Sources:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31368681
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210106015533/https://twitter.c...
| clausecker wrote:
| Evidently this does not apply to ARMv9/SVE, which Apple so
| far eschews.
| kvemkon wrote:
| > All ARM advancements since ARMv8 come FROM apple.
|
| This made me thinking Apple designed ARMv8 and gave it back
| to ARM. But from your source:
|
| > Apple contracted ARM to design a new ISA for its purposes.
| acdha wrote:
| That's theoretically true but very hard to pull off when
| Apple's handily outperforming ARM's CPU design team. It's
| unclear what they could build outside of the existing license
| that would be compelling enough to garner a much greater
| license share, especially since unless it was patentable Apple
| would have an upper bound where they'd prefer to build their
| own.
| garyclarke27 wrote:
| Apple has a special deal with Arm because they used to be in a
| Joint Venture with Acorn
|
| https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/09/05/apple-arm-have-be...
|
| Apple invested $3 million to own 43% of the company. That
| investment was specifically to fund the design and development of
| the ARM processor for what would become the Apple Newton
| MessagePad.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Was VSLI not also a partner since they fabbed the first ARM
| ???.
|
| There was a BBC series called "Micro Men" which covered the
| development of ARM, Acorn and the BBC Micro.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Didn't you read your own link? Jobs sold that 43% in the 90s
| for $1.1 billion to keep Apple afloat at the time.
|
| The reason that Apple doesn't pay much to ARM is because of the
| long term "architectural license" that Jobs negotiated in the
| 2000s well before it was clear that ARM would be the dominant
| powerhouse in mobile devices. At the time, Intel was pushing a
| low power version of their Atom chip, and Apple used that as
| leverage to get a deal from ARM.
|
| That type of license meant that Apple was in full control over
| their implementation, meaning they don't rely on the rest of
| ARM's IP like other licensees do. It doesn't use any Cortex
| designs, for instance, or any thing else in the stack. This
| means Apple uses less of ARM tech than any other licensee while
| still remaining ARM compatible.
| olliej wrote:
| Why would we expect it to be significant? Apple is not the
| largest deployer of ARM chips, and they don't use ARM's CPU
| designs, only the ISA.
|
| This is before we get to the whole "apple was a founding partner
| of ARM and has a magic license" (though at this point I have no
| idea what the actual ownership status is for this, I'm sure
| someone else on HN can say :D)
| vilunov wrote:
| What does Apple buy from ARM? The right to use the instruction
| set? Is it even eligible for licensing?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-11-29 23:02 UTC)