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I know the performance is excellent, just partly a shame considering these machines now have a 6/7 year lifespan. At least prior to Arm you could install Linux/Windows etc. Unless there is another Arm OS I don’t know about. It’s the only thing stopping me spending a small fortune on a Studio.
I don't know how good the support is, but you can already run Linux on Apple Silicon, and the situation is only going to get better as the support improves and the number of mobile, home and server devices using ARM arch increases.

x86 isn't going away any time soon, or ever, but anywhere power efficiency is important (embedded, mobile, laptop, and many server/cloud use cases) it's losing the battle.
 
What processors do the 5% of phones not using ARM have?
For example, there is still a metric ton of feature phones made and sold nowadays around the world, they use very basic/old chips as they require little processing power and they cost very little to make.
 
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For us that have been using Mac for a long time it's more like
68k (Motorola) -> PowerPC (IBM/Motorola) -> Intel -> ARM (Apple Silicon)

Is it not:
6502 (MOS) -> 68k (Motorola) -> PowerPC (IBM/Motorola) -> Intel -> ARM (Apple Silicon)
 
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What processors do the 5% of phones not using ARM have?
Speculating here, as I don't know of any specific smartphones that use these. Besides x86, my guess is there are some devices that use a MIPS processor. I think it's largely fallen out of favor, but MIPS used to be hot **** powering the N64, the first few Playstation consoles I believe, and I think even Tesla was using MIPS in their cars for a while.
 
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I’m not so sure you could get 6 big tech firms to agree on anything significant having worked with consortiums before.
Come on. USB-IF, all the IEEE standards like 802.11 (wifi) and 802.15 (bluetooth), HEVC, all the ANSI standards like HDMI. The big tech firms agree on plenty.
 
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Come on. USB-IF, all the IEEE standards like 802.11 (wifi) and 802.15 (bluetooth), HEVC, all the ANSI standards like HDMI. The big tech firms agree on plenty.
Having worked on a standards committee, the result is usually so broad to include all desired features to get “agreement” which means just because something complies with the standard means it will work with 2 different devices. Look at USB-C and RS -232 for example.
 
It was my understanding that Apple already had an essentially perpetual agreement with Arm. Anyone know what the prior arrangement was and what the details of this one might be?
 
What processors do the 5% of phones not using ARM have?
Only a guess, but maybe RISC-V? I read somewhere that Chinese tech companies are starting to embrace that architecture because of the various prohibitions imposed on the country by the "West" (mostly US).
 
"Arm's hardware underpins all of Apple's custom silicon processors" - is that actually accurate? ARM obviously doesn't produce any hardware and the article soon goes on to also say that Apple licensed the instruction set. I don't consider architectural designs nor instruction sets "hardware".

This leads me to my actual question: do Apple processors actually still have much ARM architectural content? Apple has been designing its own processors for a decade - I can't imagine them looking much like the ARM designs anymore. In other words, beyond the instruction set I can't believe Apple is using any ARM stuff anymore.
 
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If American tech companies get their hands on ARM via shares and force through management changes, it will be the end of ARM in my opinion.
For the Arm IPO, only 95.5 million American depositary shares will be listed for sale. SoftBank will still hold over a billion shares. In other words, SoftBank will control around 90.6% of Arm, so even if American tech companies buy up every single one of the 95.5 million shares, they won't hold enough shares to put through any changes at Arm (unless SoftBank starts dumping shares and their stake in Arm drops below 50% which I don't see happening any time soon)
 
Would love to have all these companies go back to their original logos. They were much better. The new ones all look the same - boring.
 
Well I would have thought Apple would want a controlling amount of shares considering they use a lot of ARM tech in their products.

SoftBank is only selling a minority share worth's of stock so even if Apple bought the entire block SoftBank would still control the bulk of the stock. So these companies are buying in more as a show of support than any strategic maneuver.


Wow, I would have bet a lot of money that Apple already had secured much longer-term rights, given their special relationship and strategic investments. Everything else seems kinda risk.

Apple's existing license for the current ARM instruction set is said to be a perpetual license so Apple can continue to develop SoCs for their products under that license forever. I presume this new license covers future ARM instruction sets and/or architectures should Apple chose to adopt them.
 
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I know the performance is excellent, just partly a shame considering these machines now have a 6/7 year lifespan. At least prior to Arm you could install Linux/Windows etc. Unless there is another Arm OS I don’t know about. It’s the only thing stopping me spending a small fortune on a Studio.
Go spend. Support in Linux is already pretty good and getting better at a rapid clip.
 
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