https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/finance/arm-adds-architectural-licensee-2015-04/ https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/finance/arm-...

https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/finance/arm-adds-architectural-licensee-2015-04/ https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/finance/arm-... Broadcom has an architectural license. They do also license core designs. Really if nVidia locks up the lower end cores, then a lot of stuff breaks. Billions of super tiny ARM cores are everywhere. ARM has few competitors in the instruction set space for low end, low power, low cost cores. AVR, PIC, and MIPS are what come to mind. And AVR/PIC are owned by Microchip corporation. These ARM chip unit licenses are dirt cheap, there's hundreds of small manufacturers, and their chips go in everything, and in unexpected places. And these aren't just little microprocessors anymore. They're even in SoCs as little coprocessors that manage separate hardware components in realtime. The amount of penetration ARM has in hidden places cannot be underestimated. And there isn't a quick replacement for them. Not one freely licensed to any manufacturer.