Except that ARM is pretty much theirs, or at least they have complete control over it, which they never did for any previous arch. They also handle chip production directly. Nothing in RISC-V could be worth more than what they can already wring out of ARM without having to migrate.

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crote 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That all depends on their current licensing terms, doesn't it?

Besides, ARM-to-RISC-V doesn't require a full redesign. Plenty of components are going to stay more-or-less the same, the big change is the instruction decoder. Chip developers have done far more drastic redesigns while staying with the same ISA - just look at the history of x86.

I think the bigger question is: does Apple want to go through another binary compatibility break?

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Tostino 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Look into Apple's ARM licensing terms. They are very generous to apple.

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sapiogram an hour ago | parent [-]

ARM could change that in the long term, Apple doesn't own them. It would be a generational fumble by ARM to lose Apple as a customer, though.

	▲	Tostino an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The license agreement they signed a few years back goes into the 2040s. Long term, you are right obviously. That is just so long term, so much can happen in that time span it's hard to even guess.

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ak_111 20 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

ten years is a very long time in technology, RISC-V ecosystem could be so vibrant and advanced that it might prove more cost effective for Apple just to feed off it (assuming Apple is still relevant by then).

It's almost like trying to predict if the smartphone leaders in 2006 (Nokia / RIM) would want to adopt this new mobile operating system that hardly anyone uses (android) in 2016.

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llm_nerd an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Apple has an architecture license agreement that extends "past 2040" (their phrasing), and it requires Apple to pay ARM ~$0.30 per device sold.

Apple can do whatever they want with the cores, but they do have to pay for the privilege and do have a future expiry to worry about, though it's far enough off that it certainly isn't pressing.