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Apple Possibly Exploring Open-Source Alternative to Arm Architecture
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Even Intel is rumored to incorporate TISC-V into their server chips ... who knows what Apple is thinking here? Good to see that they are exploring all angles
This is true for any tech company. Apple compared to others donate a lot of money for importante causes. Giving money to Nvidia is no sense, since they play bad with everyone.
Given what they want in terms of performance growth - no. Intel needs to catch up. Apple has a mature chip design and engineering capability and can innovate in this space. Doing so gives an advantage to their product line. As a company - you want to limit your dependencies as much as possible.
And another architecture change to obsolete what we've already bought. I couldn't even make this stuff up...
There is no architecture change. Just sensational headlines and forum posters that don’t understand the topic.
Isn't it what everyone wants? Do some people want to pay more than they have to?
We'll see, I really wouldn't be surprised -- not that it would really mean much to me, they've already chased me off of buying new Apple hardware.
I know my university’s ECE department has switch to RISC-V entirely. Signatories are very strong, most tier 1 universities around the world and also emerging tech titans like AliBaba Cloud are all developing custom processors for cloud computing and supercomputers. Consumer electronics will start with embedded systems and work its way to edge computing markets, like mobile phones.
Only way they do it is to make some pretty extensive ISA changes themselves. RISC/V is elegant from a “I’m doing a senior project in my computer architecture class” sense - but it doesn’t offer much in the way of technical advantages over Arm. I could see people switching from x86 to it, but not from Arm, other than to avoid license fees (and I don’t think Apple pays all that much to Arm in the grand scheme of things). As you’ve noted, it also has some weird properties, though so does Arm.
That said, I’m very interested in Risc-V myself, and have had secretive discussions about it with friends looking for something to do ;-)
Hence their constant massive charitable donations?
Do you know something the rest of us don't? As far as I know, the acquisition hasn't been approved yet.
Lots of naysayers here. If the bean counters determine how to save money; Apple will make it happen!
You say that almost as if they observe global trade rules. Hard to enforce rules you don't play by...
There is no way Apple makes any changes within the next 10 years. Changing over to ARM came with many risks, as well as having to sell its users on the switch. If they were to make another switch in 3-5 years, it would look as if Apple can‘t settle on a technology and they would most likely lose sales. Also, I’m sure they have some long-term contract for using ARM that is set in stone at this point.
Most likely this is a R&D position and not a sign of changing over to using RISC-V any time soon. If they do decide to use it, it could be in more minor chips, or possibly to use them in future iPhones. But I don’t see them dropping ARM on their laptops/desktops. That would be insane And a very poor business decision.
Most likely this is a R&D position and not a sign of changing over to using RISC-V any time soon. If they do decide to use it, it could be in more minor chips, or possibly to use them in future iPhones. But I don’t see them dropping ARM on their laptops/desktops. That would be insane And a very poor business decision.
I think you are being overly pessimistic. But of course, everyone has their own needs and you should look at what makes sense to you. Other than some concerns I have with Apples cSAM scanning, their product vision so far matches my own wishes very closely, and I couldn’t be happier with their switch from x86.
Apple is no stranger to the platform transition strategy, so it makes perfect sense for them to be continually investigating new technologies -- but these transitions take an incredible amount of time, energy, research and, that's right... money. So no matter how this plays out, it'll almost certainly be years before end-users have RISC-V based Apple products in hand. However, it's also worth considering that maybe they're simply keeping their options open in order to give them a stronger bargaining chip during their next contract negotiation with Arm.
Consider history: rumors were flying about Apple having an Intel-based Macintosh several years before they finally announced that such a thing was going to become a commercial reality. Likely, the same would be true for the next transition -- assuming that it even happens at all. I mean, if Apple can show the executives at Arm a functional RISC-V product -- be it a Mac, iPhone, Apple Watch or what-have-you -- then maybe those executives will think twice about trying to view Apple as nothing more than their favorite cash cow, and give Apple more favorable terms. Further, the execs at Arm can readily look back at history themselves, and will no doubt recognize that Apple doesn't bluff when it comes to these kinds of things: They've switched before and will do so again, if the value proposition favors such a switch. Therefore, it's clearly in Arm's best interest to make sure that sticking with Arm represents the better value to Apple.
So such a transition might happen... or it might not.
Consider history: rumors were flying about Apple having an Intel-based Macintosh several years before they finally announced that such a thing was going to become a commercial reality. Likely, the same would be true for the next transition -- assuming that it even happens at all. I mean, if Apple can show the executives at Arm a functional RISC-V product -- be it a Mac, iPhone, Apple Watch or what-have-you -- then maybe those executives will think twice about trying to view Apple as nothing more than their favorite cash cow, and give Apple more favorable terms. Further, the execs at Arm can readily look back at history themselves, and will no doubt recognize that Apple doesn't bluff when it comes to these kinds of things: They've switched before and will do so again, if the value proposition favors such a switch. Therefore, it's clearly in Arm's best interest to make sure that sticking with Arm represents the better value to Apple.
So such a transition might happen... or it might not.
Given the hundreds of billions Apple has it would be beyond foolish not to hire a RISC-V person/team to explore the architecture and get their platforms running on it... and inform the ExCo and other relevant leads on the findings (and even spin up some custom variants internally... not that hard to do).
All this would be far less than their bagels and donuts budget.
All this would be far less than their bagels and donuts budget.
They don’t have to sell users on the switch. Users would not notice any change. There’s a reason they don’t mention Arm much. They’ll change when they want to, but I agree it’s not coming soon.
Apple doesn’t use any of ARM hardware IP, so they only pay for the use of architecture (ISA), which probably makes their license costs insignificant compared to R&D costs. I bet ARM makes much more money of Qualcomm and Samsung who actually use ARMs hardware designs than they make off Apple.
Not to mention Apple’s historical involvement with Arm probably results in a better deal than other architectural licensees get.