5 ms·

At Apple's scale, is there much financial advantage to switching from ARM to RISC V for iOS devices? Does Apple have to pay ARM any per-device royalties?

ip26 8y ago
That's all closely guarded, I'm not even sure if that's public knowledge or not. Worth noting, however, Apple's quarterly revenue is like $50B while ARM's is $500M- split across many customers. Apple certainly has shown a proclivity for such bravado, but I think there's no way it wouldn't be a huge setback to the business & the competitiveness of their chips, and breaking free of Intel ASAP is probably worth a lot more than any royalties they pay ARM.
- ksec 8y ago
  >That's all closely guarded, I'm not even sure if that's public knowledge or not. Well it isn't closely guarded really. Apple has an architecture license, which is the most expensive one time cost license but pays little to no cost per chip. Since none of the ARM designs fits Apple criteria anyway and Apple are investing into design of their own. Remember Apple has an ARMv8 64bit SoC Shipping before ARM themselves even had a ARMv8 blueprint design for PreOrder. So in terms of Financial incentives, Apple has no reason to switch to any other ISA.
  - ip26 8y ago
    Yes, arch license. But do we know for a fact that there is no per-chip or per-wafer royalty? I hadn't heard.
- metildaa 8y ago
  There are 70 million active MacOS users, and closing in on a billion iOS users. MacOS and the hardware that runs it is an afterthought for Apple, they just want to keep it somewhat alive. Redeveloping for a new ISA was feasible when it was a life or death move Apple had to make to stay up with the rapidly improving PC world. As is Apple will likely build a customized Ryzen chip with the AMD secure enclave cut out if they want to do anything for their MacOS line of products. China literally bought the full design for Ryzen for $300 million, a custom chip would be well below that cost.
  - jeffbax 8y ago
    Apple will almost certainly not switch to AMD rather than going all in on ARM, as much as I wish I had a Ryzen Mac option. Also Apple having $50B in revenue vs $500m for ARM doesn't mean they would be guaranteed to out execute the entire loosely federated ecosystem starting from scratch. It's possible I suppose, but is unlikely to be a more efficient way to allocate financial resources.

ip26 8y ago

That's all closely guarded, I'm not even sure if that's public knowledge or not. Worth noting, however, Apple's quarterly revenue is like $50B while ARM's is $500M- split across many customers. Apple certainly has shown a proclivity for such bravado, but I think there's no way it wouldn't be a huge setback to the business & the competitiveness of their chips, and breaking free of Intel ASAP is probably worth a lot more than any royalties they pay ARM.

ksec 8y ago
>That's all closely guarded, I'm not even sure if that's public knowledge or not. Well it isn't closely guarded really. Apple has an architecture license, which is the most expensive one time cost license but pays little to no cost per chip. Since none of the ARM designs fits Apple criteria anyway and Apple are investing into design of their own. Remember Apple has an ARMv8 64bit SoC Shipping before ARM themselves even had a ARMv8 blueprint design for PreOrder. So in terms of Financial incentives, Apple has no reason to switch to any other ISA.
- ip26 8y ago
  Yes, arch license. But do we know for a fact that there is no per-chip or per-wafer royalty? I hadn't heard.
metildaa 8y ago
There are 70 million active MacOS users, and closing in on a billion iOS users. MacOS and the hardware that runs it is an afterthought for Apple, they just want to keep it somewhat alive. Redeveloping for a new ISA was feasible when it was a life or death move Apple had to make to stay up with the rapidly improving PC world. As is Apple will likely build a customized Ryzen chip with the AMD secure enclave cut out if they want to do anything for their MacOS line of products. China literally bought the full design for Ryzen for $300 million, a custom chip would be well below that cost.
- jeffbax 8y ago
  Apple will almost certainly not switch to AMD rather than going all in on ARM, as much as I wish I had a Ryzen Mac option. Also Apple having $50B in revenue vs $500m for ARM doesn't mean they would be guaranteed to out execute the entire loosely federated ecosystem starting from scratch. It's possible I suppose, but is unlikely to be a more efficient way to allocate financial resources.