5 ms·

Apple is the one company out there that does not need to care one way or the other what Nvidia does. ARM was created as a joint effort between Acorn, VLSI, and

by evgen 5y ago

Apple is the one company out there that does not need to care one way or the other what Nvidia does. ARM was created as a joint effort between Acorn, VLSI, and Apple. Apple has a perpetual license and can basically do whatever they want with the architecture for their own products. The strangest thing about this is trying to imagine a use case where Risc-V makes sense but a low-end ARM chip does not...

philistine 5y ago
When Apple bought NeXt, they also bought its agnostic attitude towards architectures. macOS compiled on Intel chips for years in secret before they publicly unveiled the transition. I'm pretty sure iOS compiled on Intel since its earliest days, and macOS ran on ARM for close to a decade before the current transition. All that to say that Apple is able and willing to cross-compile for long-term strategic reasons. I don't expect anything particular to come of this for a decade at least; if anything its probably just keeping abreast of developments in the RISC-V ecosystem that could be useful on their own chips.
- mattl 5y ago
  Apple gave everyone a copy of OPENSTEP 4.2 at an event, then released a few developer previews of Rhapsody for Intel hardware. I don’t think it was too shocking that OS X was being built on Intel hardware no matter what the story from Apple is.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Darwin was available to the public to run on Intel well before the switch over. It just didn't have the Aqua interface.
ngcc_hk 5y ago
May be they have we do not have details though. But even if they have the original you are nit sure one day you may have a patent or later development that you need. And all architecture has bottleneck. All. One day may hear qm even. If they are not studying they are stupid like Kodak (which basically invent and lead in digital photography). What the real surprise is apple cannot package well something invented somewhere and move the pain point out (like iphone, like low end computing of m1 etc). Apple TV … what a surprise failure. And Copland …
tambourine_man 5y ago
They still have to pay ARM for each chip they sell, right? Perpetual license doesn’t mean lifetime free use of intelectual property, I guess.
- bognition 5y ago
  Depends on the terms of the license.
- lallysingh 5y ago
  My guess is no, they don't want to disclose that stuff. If they were a founding member, they can just contribute enough cash to avoid it.
- Symmetry 5y ago
  I've heard references to savings on the per-unit fee as a reason some manufacturers might want to go with an architectural license, so maybe not?
hajile 5y ago
I think they must buy a new license for each new ISA version they want to use. That makes new features a potential risk factor.
- ksec 5y ago
  But Apple doesn't need a new ISA version ( ARM v9 ) when it is 99% the same as ARM v8.3 with more mandatory feature set.
  - hajile 5y ago
    It adds to the security model and (more importantly) adds SVE2. More things are coming down the pipeline too.
    - ksec 5y ago
      SVE2 is not specific to ARMv9. You can have ARMv8 with SVE2. And Apple doesn't need to implement everything ARM develop.
      - hajile 5y ago
        My understanding from Anandtech's article a few months ago was that SVE is available for ARMv8, but SVE2 was left to ARMv9 to encourage updating. Apple has beaten ARM to production with pretty much every v8 release (though I think neither use most 8.5 or 8.6 features yet).
bee_rider 5y ago
I wonder -- if Nvidia takes ARM in a direction they don't like (doesn't match Apple workloads -- maybe a gaming focus or something), in the very least Apple will stop benefiting from being part of that ecosystem. In that case, they might as well go to Risc-V, right? It is at least hypothetically possible that the community will produce something they find useful, and being on Risc-V would ease integration.
cwizou 5y ago
Apple kicked Nvidia out of its product line a long while ago, after Nvidia tried to collect licensing fees on every iPhone sales for their GPU IP. They launched their legal actions with Samsung first, and it backfired spectacularly. [1] I believe there are some higher ups who would not welcome at all a Nvidia takeover of ARM, and that's putting aside potential increases of licensing fees, or other actions. I'm sure they have a plan B in place should that happen. Whether those hiring are it or not, I don't know. [1] : https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nvidia-samsung-elec-idUSKCN0XT1QO https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nvidia-samsung-elec-idUSK...

by evgen 5y ago

philistine 5y ago

When Apple bought NeXt, they also bought its agnostic attitude towards architectures. macOS compiled on Intel chips for years in secret before they publicly unveiled the transition. I'm pretty sure iOS compiled on Intel since its earliest days, and macOS ran on ARM for close to a decade before the current transition. All that to say that Apple is able and willing to cross-compile for long-term strategic reasons. I don't expect anything particular to come of this for a decade at least; if anything its probably just keeping abreast of developments in the RISC-V ecosystem that could be useful on their own chips.

mattl 5y ago
Apple gave everyone a copy of OPENSTEP 4.2 at an event, then released a few developer previews of Rhapsody for Intel hardware. I don’t think it was too shocking that OS X was being built on Intel hardware no matter what the story from Apple is.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Darwin was available to the public to run on Intel well before the switch over. It just didn't have the Aqua interface.

ngcc_hk 5y ago

May be they have we do not have details though. But even if they have the original you are nit sure one day you may have a patent or later development that you need. And all architecture has bottleneck. All. One day may hear qm even. If they are not studying they are stupid like Kodak (which basically invent and lead in digital photography). What the real surprise is apple cannot package well something invented somewhere and move the pain point out (like iphone, like low end computing of m1 etc). Apple TV … what a surprise failure. And Copland …

tambourine_man 5y ago

They still have to pay ARM for each chip they sell, right? Perpetual license doesn’t mean lifetime free use of intelectual property, I guess.

bognition 5y ago
Depends on the terms of the license.
lallysingh 5y ago
My guess is no, they don't want to disclose that stuff. If they were a founding member, they can just contribute enough cash to avoid it.
Symmetry 5y ago
I've heard references to savings on the per-unit fee as a reason some manufacturers might want to go with an architectural license, so maybe not?

hajile 5y ago

I think they must buy a new license for each new ISA version they want to use. That makes new features a potential risk factor.

ksec 5y ago
But Apple doesn't need a new ISA version ( ARM v9 ) when it is 99% the same as ARM v8.3 with more mandatory feature set.
- hajile 5y ago
  It adds to the security model and (more importantly) adds SVE2. More things are coming down the pipeline too.
  - ksec 5y ago
    SVE2 is not specific to ARMv9. You can have ARMv8 with SVE2. And Apple doesn't need to implement everything ARM develop.
    - hajile 5y ago
      My understanding from Anandtech's article a few months ago was that SVE is available for ARMv8, but SVE2 was left to ARMv9 to encourage updating. Apple has beaten ARM to production with pretty much every v8 release (though I think neither use most 8.5 or 8.6 features yet).

bee_rider 5y ago

I wonder -- if Nvidia takes ARM in a direction they don't like (doesn't match Apple workloads -- maybe a gaming focus or something), in the very least Apple will stop benefiting from being part of that ecosystem. In that case, they might as well go to Risc-V, right? It is at least hypothetically possible that the community will produce something they find useful, and being on Risc-V would ease integration.

cwizou 5y ago

Apple kicked Nvidia out of its product line a long while ago, after Nvidia tried to collect licensing fees on every iPhone sales for their GPU IP. They launched their legal actions with Samsung first, and it backfired spectacularly. [1] I believe there are some higher ups who would not welcome at all a Nvidia takeover of ARM, and that's putting aside potential increases of licensing fees, or other actions. I'm sure they have a plan B in place should that happen. Whether those hiring are it or not, I don't know. [1] : https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nvidia-samsung-elec-idUSKCN0XT1QO https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nvidia-samsung-elec-idUSK...