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Apple holds a rare Architecture license to the ARM ISA due to their role as a founding partner, and can make original implementations without incurring licensin

Apple holds a rare Architecture license to the ARM ISA due to their role as a founding partner, and can make original implementations without incurring licensing dues, as they do with the A and M series CPUs. I understand why they would want to switch to homegrown designs instead of licensing ARM reference designs (which they do have to pay for), but why migrate instruction sets too when RISC-V doesn't save them any marginal cost over novel ARM designs that would be binary compatible with the existing firmware?

klelatti 3y ago
> Apple holds a rare Architecture license to the ARM ISA due to their role as a founding partner, and can make original implementations without incurring licensing dues Sorry, the architecture license wasn’t a thing when Arm was founded and there is no way that Arm would hand out free licenses at a later date. It’s just a myth.
zie 3y ago
"We have entered into a new long-term agreement with Apple that extends beyond 2040, continuing our longstanding relationship of collaboration with Apple and Apple's access to the Arm architecture," - ARM's IPO Document. I assume they paid something for it, but who knows how much, ARM and Apple have not decided to tell us. Source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1973239/000119312523228059/d393891df1a.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1973239/000119312523...