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> This certainly applies to random manufacturers, but not necessarily Apple. Do they pay royalties to ARM at all? I don't know if there are any public details
by throwawaylinux 4y ago
> This certainly applies to random manufacturers, but not necessarily Apple. Do they pay royalties to ARM at all?
I don't know if there are any public details about license and royalty structure for Apple, but this is ARM Ltd's core business and it's how they make their money. So, probably.
> And of course, they could create any ISA extension, if they wanted.
I'm not sure about that. I think licensees are bound by certain requirements to implement the architecture faithfully. Now Apple obviously has a huge sway and could lobby ARM to make changes it wants. But it does not necessarily have final control of that either.
> But currently they seem to be heading more into the direction of creating additional compute units (like the neural processors) rather than adding new instructions to the CPUs.
- desiarnezjr 4y agoApple co-founded ARM. I recall somewhere that they did have a very special license, but can't recall the details.
- _ph_ 4y agoAs Apple is a co-founder of ARM and holds and architectural license, I think the chances are high, that they neither pay any or significant royalties and have a lot of freedom. As could be seen in the special switch making the memory semantics of the Apple Silicon match that of x86, making the job of Rosetta easier.
- throwawaylinux 4y agoApple holds an architectural license, but I've never heard it suggested they can avoid paying royalties to ARM before. Doesn't seem very likely to me.
- garaetjjte 4y ago>I'm not sure about that. I think licensees are bound by certain requirements to implement the architecture faithfully Apple designs already deviate from ARM64 specifications, like adding custom instructions: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/HW:Apple-Instructions https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/HW:Apple-Instruction...