• conciselyverbose@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    11 months ago

    Ignoring that Apple’s chips as laptop flagships have pretty much singlehandedly changed the perception on their viability for actual computers, how much of ARM’s work are they actually using?

    They design their own chips that are meaningfully ahead of ARM’s. I understand that their contract allows them pretty broad access to IP, but are we sure they’d be that much worse off (especially compared to ARM) if this deal wasn’t signed and Apple put the investment into a different instruction set?

    Hell, they built most of the smartphone and tablet market. Are we sure ARM would even be relevant without Apple’s weight?

    • kirklennon@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      11 months ago

      how much of ARM’s work are they actually using?

      Apple doesn’t use Arm’s designs for their chips. They have a license to the Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) and use that to make their own designs.

      • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        My understanding was that their right are pretty broad and that they could basically use official designs, fully custom designs, or anything in between.

        My question is whether they adopt any design elements from ARM (whether modified or not) or if it’s completely an implementation of the instruction set from scratch.