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Apple is far from the only company with that kind of license ( Qualcomm, Nvidia, Samsung, even Intel)

klelatti 6y ago
Not 100% sure that Intel has a 64 bit architectural license that is in the public domain (happy to be corrected). AMD certainly does.
- JoachimS 6y ago
  Not sure what the status is today, but 2015 the answer was no on Intel: https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/finance/arm-adds-architectural-licensee-2015-04/ https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/finance/arm-... "The company has seven publicly announced 64-bit architectural licensees: Applied Micro, Broadcom, Cavium, Apple, Huawei, Nvidia, AMD and Samsung. It also has another seven publicly announced 32-bit architectural licensees, of which five – Marvell, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Intel and Faraday – do not have a 64-bit licence."
  - panpanna 6y ago
    Thanks, I did not know that. I wonder why AMD has a license. These licenses are _not cheap_ !! Fun fact: AMD Zen processors contain at least one ARM cpu but as far as I know they are always 32bit and not modified from original hard macros.
    - klelatti 6y ago
      They used to be quite keen on ARM in the datacentre - the last slide here [1] is interesting! Seems like the strategy changed. [1] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/175583-amd-unveils-its-first-arm-based-cpu-the-64-bit-8-core-opteron-a1100 https://www.extremetech.com/computing/175583-amd-unveils-its...
JoachimS 6y ago
I hope you noticed "most". I did not say "the only". There are many, many ARM SoC developers. Very few of them have the right to modify or develop their own ARM core. It is also a question of what you do with your license. The cores in Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets for example differs quite little from the cores from ARM. Simularly with Samsung Exynos. They are basically A7x with some other big.LITTLE combination. Apple on the other hand have repeatedly shown that they are both willing and capable at doing their own micro architecture. I would like to credit the aquisition of PA Semi for starting this. But they of course are not the only people Apple have added to build competence and capability in this area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi
- panpanna 6y ago
  Not trying to start an argument with you, but this is incorrect. Essentially all major vendors have this license, and essentially all major vendors do their own heavily modified designs. They have different goals,priorities, budgets and abilities but if you buy a COTS soc from a major vendor you can bet your neck it's not original arm hard macro or even a lightly modified custom version. In fact, the only major 64-bit pure-arm soc I can think of right now is the Hisense (Huawei) Kirin 960.

Not 100% sure that Intel has a 64 bit architectural license that is in the public domain (happy to be corrected). AMD certainly does.

JoachimS 6y ago
Not sure what the status is today, but 2015 the answer was no on Intel: https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/finance/arm-adds-architectural-licensee-2015-04/ https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/finance/arm-... "The company has seven publicly announced 64-bit architectural licensees: Applied Micro, Broadcom, Cavium, Apple, Huawei, Nvidia, AMD and Samsung. It also has another seven publicly announced 32-bit architectural licensees, of which five – Marvell, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Intel and Faraday – do not have a 64-bit licence."
- panpanna 6y ago
  Thanks, I did not know that. I wonder why AMD has a license. These licenses are _not cheap_ !! Fun fact: AMD Zen processors contain at least one ARM cpu but as far as I know they are always 32bit and not modified from original hard macros.
  - klelatti 6y ago
    They used to be quite keen on ARM in the datacentre - the last slide here [1] is interesting! Seems like the strategy changed. [1] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/175583-amd-unveils-its-first-arm-based-cpu-the-64-bit-8-core-opteron-a1100 https://www.extremetech.com/computing/175583-amd-unveils-its...

JoachimS 6y ago

I hope you noticed "most". I did not say "the only". There are many, many ARM SoC developers. Very few of them have the right to modify or develop their own ARM core. It is also a question of what you do with your license. The cores in Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets for example differs quite little from the cores from ARM. Simularly with Samsung Exynos. They are basically A7x with some other big.LITTLE combination. Apple on the other hand have repeatedly shown that they are both willing and capable at doing their own micro architecture. I would like to credit the aquisition of PA Semi for starting this. But they of course are not the only people Apple have added to build competence and capability in this area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi

panpanna 6y ago
Not trying to start an argument with you, but this is incorrect. Essentially all major vendors have this license, and essentially all major vendors do their own heavily modified designs. They have different goals,priorities, budgets and abilities but if you buy a COTS soc from a major vendor you can bet your neck it's not original arm hard macro or even a lightly modified custom version. In fact, the only major 64-bit pure-arm soc I can think of right now is the Hisense (Huawei) Kirin 960.