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ARM makes most of its money in royalties, not licensing. Under royalties, how much comes from chips that use their designs and how much from ones that don't, I

ARM makes most of its money in royalties, not licensing. Under royalties, how much comes from chips that use their designs and how much from ones that don't, I don't know. Do they make that data available? > I suspect Apple pays very small fees which are not material in the context of the Mac. Why do you suspect they are very small?

klelatti 4y ago
There were at a minimum 1.5 billion A series based CPUs sold last year - possibly a lot more. Arm’s total royalty sales were $1.5bn. I think we can safely say that the fees Apple pays - with its architecture license - are not material in the context of the Mac.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  > There were at a minimum 1.5 billion A series based CPUs sold last year - possibly a lot more. Arm’s total royalty sales were $1.5bn. I think we can safely say that the fees Apple pays - with its architecture license - are not material in the context of the Mac. I don't see how that follows. You don't know what their royalty arrangement is. It's probably related to the value of the chip sold. If they sell 20 million macs a year and pay ARM 2 bucks a chip that's 40 million every year. If macs have a gross profit of a couple of billion that's not insignificant. Could be 5% of that. Not to mention several hundred million a year for iphones. Lot of money to pay to be locked into a proprietary ISA when you almost entirely support your own ecosystem, compilers, OSes, etc anyway.
  - klelatti 4y ago
    Apple’s net margin is around 25% so that’s around $300 per Mac sold so with your $2 it’s about 2/3% for which it probably gets access to all of Arm’s IP (eg big.LITTLE) as well as use of an ISA that Apple has long experience using and almost certainly helped to shape. As I said not material in this context. Oh and they are clearly not locked in as they have just changed the ISA for Macs anyway.
    - throwawaylinux 4y ago
      > Apple’s net margin is around 25% so that’s around $300 per Mac sold so with your $2 it’s about 2/3% That's a lot. > for which it probably gets access to all of Arm’s IP (eg big.LITTLE) as well That isn't how their licensing works. They license IP and charge royalties for cores. Apple would pay extra to license ARM Ltd cores they use.
      - klelatti 4y ago
        You obviously think that Arm's ISA and related IP has very little value so not much point in debating further.
        throwawaylinux 4y ago
        What? You're the one who is trying to say Apple is only paying a pittance to ARM for it! You're making no sense.

klelatti 4y ago

There were at a minimum 1.5 billion A series based CPUs sold last year - possibly a lot more. Arm’s total royalty sales were $1.5bn. I think we can safely say that the fees Apple pays - with its architecture license - are not material in the context of the Mac.

throwawaylinux 4y ago
> There were at a minimum 1.5 billion A series based CPUs sold last year - possibly a lot more. Arm’s total royalty sales were $1.5bn. I think we can safely say that the fees Apple pays - with its architecture license - are not material in the context of the Mac. I don't see how that follows. You don't know what their royalty arrangement is. It's probably related to the value of the chip sold. If they sell 20 million macs a year and pay ARM 2 bucks a chip that's 40 million every year. If macs have a gross profit of a couple of billion that's not insignificant. Could be 5% of that. Not to mention several hundred million a year for iphones. Lot of money to pay to be locked into a proprietary ISA when you almost entirely support your own ecosystem, compilers, OSes, etc anyway.
- klelatti 4y ago
  Apple’s net margin is around 25% so that’s around $300 per Mac sold so with your $2 it’s about 2/3% for which it probably gets access to all of Arm’s IP (eg big.LITTLE) as well as use of an ISA that Apple has long experience using and almost certainly helped to shape. As I said not material in this context. Oh and they are clearly not locked in as they have just changed the ISA for Macs anyway.
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    > Apple’s net margin is around 25% so that’s around $300 per Mac sold so with your $2 it’s about 2/3% That's a lot. > for which it probably gets access to all of Arm’s IP (eg big.LITTLE) as well That isn't how their licensing works. They license IP and charge royalties for cores. Apple would pay extra to license ARM Ltd cores they use.
    - klelatti 4y ago
      You obviously think that Arm's ISA and related IP has very little value so not much point in debating further.
      - throwawaylinux 4y ago
        What? You're the one who is trying to say Apple is only paying a pittance to ARM for it! You're making no sense.