so intel/Apple....great news....and....do intel still make chips for the Apple desktop range 
hint hint....
hint hint....
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Intel Foundries Able to Produce ARM-Based Chips Under New Licensing Deal
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That statement totally makes no sense whatsoever. Apple design their own ARM cores. They don't need anybody's permission to fab them wherever they want. Neither, obviously, does TSMC or Intel need ARM's permission to fab for Apple.
Someone has been to keen on writing in Apple in a story that doesn't feature Apple.
I think you're seriously misunderstanding what the article is saying. This is saying that manufacturers will be able to use Intel's fabs for their ARM chips, because Intel has made a deal with ARM Holdings.
The iPhone will never, i repeat, NEVER, run an x86-derived SoC. There'd be no point.
I don't believe Intel can fab chips for Apple without ARMs permission. While Apple may have licensed a subset of the ARM instruction set for development and use, it is not an all encompassing permission to do what you want and even though Apple's R&D may have differentiated [the ARM spec] to the point of being unrecognizable, it is still ARMs instruction set, which they licensed and agreed to terms on.
It's the same thing for TSMC - they received approval for the PFP in 2003 (I think, but my memory may be wrong and I am too lazy to look it up).
To my understanding, that's with designing the chips, not manufacturing them. Their manufacturing arm seems pretty robust, and if they're producing chips designed by other people (such as Apple's A series, which is developed in house), it shouldn't make a difference.
Oh yeah, I can see that. Right now they know TSMC can't do it all for them and they're finding a new company to replace them. I'm simply saying users won't see much of a difference.
Called it ages ago. Intel has the leading technology when it comes to fabs and is under utilising them due to the slowdown in the sales of PC's. Each new shrinkage requires more and more capital than the previous process so if you are not really growing (outside of server based chips) then the only option is to open up your foundries.
Apple's huge cash reserves and massive demand for chips based on the best possible tech + Intel's leading foundries = was going to happen eventually. Intel is no longer competing in the SoC market so it makes sense. Good news for us consumers, Intel's 14nm process is the best in the business and ahead of anything TSMC, Samsung or GloFo have, so better performance + lower battery life and with the potential for a massive order from Apple they will have the cash needed to stay ahead of the pack at the 10nm and 7nm levels. No doubt this Intel Modem in the new iPhone 7 is just Apple testing the waters.
Apple's huge cash reserves and massive demand for chips based on the best possible tech + Intel's leading foundries = was going to happen eventually. Intel is no longer competing in the SoC market so it makes sense. Good news for us consumers, Intel's 14nm process is the best in the business and ahead of anything TSMC, Samsung or GloFo have, so better performance + lower battery life and with the potential for a massive order from Apple they will have the cash needed to stay ahead of the pack at the 10nm and 7nm levels. No doubt this Intel Modem in the new iPhone 7 is just Apple testing the waters.
Ah, but you see how can they be displaced when they are manufacturing (rather profitably I assume) the chips at the high end
Apple designs their own cores under a license from ARM (for instruction set patents, trademarks, & etc.). There may well be restrictions under that license, which isn't public information.
I think they're all a part of ARMs Processor Foundry Program (https://www.arm.com/products/buying-guide/licensing/processor-foundry-program.php) but I don't remember or didn't know the details that are available.
It's pretty neat stuff!
I don't care if you care if you care or not
I was just anticipating people mistakenly thinking this would mean programs intended for x86 architecture would somehow be available on their smartphones. It doesn't.
Intel's ARM license implies that a license to design does not give you a license to manufacture. Indeed, Intel did the same thing with x86, where your fab needed an x86 license to manufacture x86 chips - in addition to the IP associated with the x86 instruction set.
Given Apple's history with ARM you'd think that Apple would have a blanket license to do whatever they wanted with ARM. But of course Apple isn't the only ARM player in town by far.
I wonder what the MOQ for Intel's fab is. 1m units?
Well I'm glad somebody is because Apple seems on the verge of turning the Mac into a hobby business at best and I still need a traditional PC to do work on.
Ah, but you see how can they be displaced when they are manufacturing (rather profitably I assume) the chips at the high end
I'm not a conspiracy theorist for an ARM MacBook and I also think Apple has had its hands in Intel's roadmap to improve the Mac line (look at those investments in integrated graphics!), but I wonder if that kind of weight into ARM will affect Intel 10-12 years from now. ARM has successfully weaved its way into the future (inside even future major breakthrough products, especially as they get smaller and lighter) but Intel is just supplying the now with its top line. Core M may be the exception, but if the investment in ARM challenges that on multiple fronts, who know?!
Apple has squeezed a lot out of the v8 design.
Mac, not PC.
Mac is much more fluid than PC's. Apple could do a quantum powered computer and call it a "Mac", and it would stick, Microsoft can't.
I don't think Macs are going that way just because MBPs are outdated, but more and more things are going in the server + thin client way.
Intel is still a full process node ahead, despite the silly figures TSMC and Samsung tout. Features like metal interconnects are quite a bit smaller on Intel's processes. That being said, they joined the game perhaps too late for Apple. They'd need to offer a competetive wafer package solution to woo Apple away from TSMC, and I don't know that they have that.
XScale was a little different from StrongARM, the most noticeable difference being the lack of the legacy 26-bit PC register (which broke many older apps). XScale was definitely still ARM though, and made it into commercial systems like Castle's "Iyonix PC".
It appears that Intel sold the licence to Marvell in 2006.
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Why would you possibly care the ARM chip in your phone was fabricated in an Intel plant?
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I doubt Apple would sign a design deal with ARM that didn't let Apple fab wherever they pleased. Why would they let ARM have a say in the fabrication, and why would ARM even want that?
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Why would Apple let their fab decisions be held hostage to ARM? That would have been a very foolish thing to agree to, and completely unnecessary. Apple has a reputation for being a tough negotiator, so this seems so unlikely it's not worth discussing.
Kind of surprised nobody has mentioned Intel's purchase of Altera, and that Altera has an ARM license to embed A5 cores in its FPGA silicon. (Altera was a fabless company, and usually used Intel fabs.)
Granted, those of us who are long time Altera customers are scared to death at this point, knowing how Intel has treated previous acquisitions. There's a gap in their product line they could fill with a Cyclone 10, but it looks like it's not happening...
Granted, those of us who are long time Altera customers are scared to death at this point, knowing how Intel has treated previous acquisitions. There's a gap in their product line they could fill with a Cyclone 10, but it looks like it's not happening...
Well Intel may aswell spy some ARM secrets while manufactureung those chips and in end boot arm away... They also may buy the whole arm... that way to assure themselfes to be the only arm providers of chips... Lets see what will hapen and what apple will do afterwards... tough i would still like apple to buy amd wholy!
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What the other guy said does make some sense. Heres some info from an (older) anandtech article -:
AMD, Intel and NVIDIA all make money by ultimately selling someone a chip. ARM’s revenue comes entirely from IP licensing. It’s up to ARM’s licensees/partners/customers to actually build and sell the chip. There are two amounts that all ARM licensees have to pay: an upfront license fee, and a royalty.
The upfront license fee depends on the complexity of the design you’re licensing. An older ARM11 will have a lower up front fee than a Cortex A57. The upfront fee generally ranges from $1M - $10M, although there are options lower or higher than that (I’ll get to that shortly).
The royalty is on a per chip basis. Every chip that contains ARM IP has a royalty associated with it. The royalty is typically 1 - 2% of the selling price of the chip. For chips that are sold externally that’s an easy figure to calculate, but if a company is building and selling a chip internally the royalty is based on what the market price would be for that chip.
So it seems both Apple as a designer, and Intel as a manufacturer both need agreements in place with ARM for things to go ahead. This seems to be confirmed by the wording used in the relevent bloomberg article -:
Adding licenses for ARM’s technology could open up that business to fabricating chips based on those designs for companies such as Qualcomm Inc. and Apple Inc., which now have their chips produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and others.
I could be reading too much into it, and be totally off track, but it seems that way to me at least. Someone could always email ARMS IP licensing sales team https://www.arm.com/products/buying-guide/licensing/index.php to confirm if they truly cared.