ARM Licensing and Acquisitions
Discussions focus on ARM's licensing model, Apple's special architectural license and historical ties, and implications of ownership changes like NVIDIA's failed acquisition attempt.
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They are an ARM licensee. ARM was acquired by NVIDIA. If there's bad blood between NVIDIA and Apple, all the more reason for Apple to drop ARM and go with a custom, Apple-designed ISA.
Interesting given that they own ARM.
It is. They made ARM chips for years and still hold a license.
Given ARM is mostly an IP bsaed company that wouldn't really work. For reference just look at what happened with ARM's china susidiary with which this basically happened.
Can anyone explain why ARM have not been bought by Intel, MS, Apple or Google yet?
They sold their ARM stake in their near-death phase. They have an architectural license.At this point I assume their whole ARM portfolio has been designed from scratch and they are paying those license fees for patent licenses and bc they still use the ARM instruction set. Cheaper than switching.
It's likely that Apple has a special contract given ARM's origin.
Apple is one of the founders of ARM with very different licensing pricing and rights. Apple using ARM is very different from Google or Samsung using ARM.
They most likely just licensed the ARM IP.
because ARM was founded as a joint venture that included Apple, its extremely likely they have special terms.