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> in case ARM gets bought by NVidia and NVidia tries to shut them out. Tries to shut them out how? Apple has a perpetual license to the instruction set, and th
by 4ad 5y ago
> in case ARM gets bought by NVidia and NVidia tries to shut them out.
Tries to shut them out how? Apple has a perpetual license to the instruction set, and the implementation is custom, it doesn't use ARMs reference designs.
- londons_explore 5y agoI assume that perpetual license still has some per-unit or share-of-revenue price? In which case, Apple might consider switching to RISC-V as a way to save money. Or they might make noises about switching to renegotiate a lower price.
- tyingq 5y agoAnandtech's story on what the likely annual royalties are, as a percentage of what the market price for the chip would be: ARM7/9/11 1.0% - 1.5% ARM Cortex A-series 1.5% - 2.0% ARMv8 Based Cortex A-series 2.0% and above Mali GPU 0.75% - 1.25% added on Physical IP Package (POP) 0.5% added on https://www.anandtech.com/show/7112/the-arm-diaries-part-1-how-arms-business-model-works/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/7112/the-arm-diaries-part-1-h... It also mentions the simpler way of saying it. Half of ARM's revenue comes from royalties. So it stands to reason that you could halve your costs if you moved to a royalty free part with the same up-front cost.