Yeah, agreed that architectural licensees definitely influence future ARM specifications - e.g. Fujitsu was a major driver behind SVE. IMO, there's an importan

Yeah, agreed that architectural licensees definitely influence future ARM specifications - e.g. Fujitsu was a major driver behind SVE. IMO, there's an important difference between Apple adding new instructions that are not in the spec, and Apple convincing ARM to add new instructions to the spec and then implementing those instructions. In the first case, those are Apple-only instructions. In the second, that's just Apple implementing new ARM instructions. > But they've allowed architecture licensees to do that for a long time I don't agree that developing specifications and extensions based on the needs and desires of licensees is the same as permitting licensees to add custom instructions not permitted by the specification. > They don't benefit from bossing Apple around ARM benefits greatly from limiting fragmentation of their platform by exerting control over licensees.