This is all prediciton and Apple invested a lot into switch to Arm which paid off so going back to x86 isn't an option. Especially because of the i86 instruction decoder situation. The fixed size instructions on Arm is a really good thing imho. And the much better thermals which are key in mobile devices. I know thermals are not an attribute of architecture but more of a super low EUV in TSMC process nodes but it adds up.
Apple doesn't use ARM designs and RISC instruction sets shouldn't technically "stagnate"
I also know that AMBA, with AXI and other popular bus designs from ARM are free to use without ARM CPU in the system and should be separately licensed when you use ARM ISA in your system. I can assume with high probability that most of peripherial devices like DRAM controller and others are using one of the AMBA buses.
Basically, if you use ARM CPU commercially, you are on hook to pay some not insignificant amount of money in perpetuity.
So, if Apple will continue to use ARM, they will be an ARM's customer, a significant one.
Is the competition from RISC-V really that stiff?
I think most of the effort is getting GCC, LLVM, Linux, etc. support, and some working design to put RISC-V on top of. In other words, the difficult is in the number of cats to be herded.
In a way, I hope the deal does go through just to accelerate the transition away from ARM.
The only problem right now is that high performance in the RISC-V world is about 4-5 generations behind ARM, so the fastest SoCs you can buy have cores that are roughly equivalent to a Cortex A73. SiFive is catching up a little each generation but they are a way off yet.
There is a low barrier to hardware design for microcontrollers, and there is almost no innovation in the ISA these days it is all in the digital logic and software around it, so charging for that is approaching rent-seeking. Not saying the ARM64 ISA is not nice and clean, but it's a warmed over RISC. There's nothing revolutionary about it and no new ideas. It just shouldn't be something that locks you in to a vendor, or requires you to pay a tax on every device. It's an "API", it should be open.
1. So quickly 2. For such small relative profit?
That was a big chunk of business to give away for free. Now you have a Western ARM, and an Eastern ARM competing with each other, in a market which Western ARM used to have all to its self. That can't be good for your valuation.
Yea, sure would be bad to be part of a (checks notes) publicly traded company like Nvidia, subject to the whims of the capital markets.
Bullshit. Ask Jeff Bezos how to do it.
Why though?
It seems like only yesterday that Arm was telling the world that RISC-V was a non-starter: https://github.com/arm-facts/arm-basics.com/blob/master/inde...
