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Couldn’t disagree more with your second paragraph. Customers making SoCs with Arm CPUs can happily go to TSMC. Intel is desperate to get IFS working and if it h

• smoldesu 4y ago
  Apple is a fraction of ARM's current business, but represents the entirety of their future. The microcontroller licensing business is pretty much over (not that ARM China refuted that), so their money will be on licensing core design and the ISA to mid-high range SOCs. RISC-V won't be there for a while, but it's already starting to replace STM32s in devices that only need simple digital controllers. The writing is on the wall - RISC will be democratized, and ARM's intellectual property is bleeding value by the day. They know this, and they're making good moves to secure their positioning by working with Intel. Even still, their stakeholders are getting iffy and even their largest customers don't see them as essential to their business. Hundreds of Chinese manufacturers already kicked them to the curb years ago. > Intel is desperate to get IFS working and if it hasn’t got an Arm offering it’s basically locked out of mobile SoCs. Or, less charitably, ARM is getting iffy about TSMC's density roadmap and wants to hedge their bet a little. They lose nothing by reaching out to Intel, and Intel loses nothing by expanding their lithography to 2 popular ISAs. It is a mutual moneymaking move, and one that would not exist if ARM corporate was confident in their ability to wait-out Intel in the long term.