> Apple is also rumored to be doing lots of R&D into RISC-V and other architectures that don't require licensing ARM. Out of all the companies making CPUs, App

> Apple is also rumored to be doing lots of R&D into RISC-V and other architectures that don't require licensing ARM. Out of all the companies making CPUs, Apple seems the least likely to have problems licensing ARM. Apple co-founded ARM, and they seem to have much more favorable licensing terms than any other company, likely due to some old contract from the Newton days that's been grandfathered in. The Asahi project is discovering quite a few ways in which Apple's processors break the ARM spec and/or implement custom instructions -- which not even architectural-license holders are allowed to do. See e.g. this comment thread from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29783549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29783549