Hard to imagine that there won't be some sort of settlement (probably with a stack of money handed to ARM). ARM has no interest in slaughtering QCOM, which is one of their biggest customers.
Qualcomm to Take on Apple Silicon Chips With Snapdragon X Series for PCs
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TSMC (which makes Apple's CPUs) also begged for and is receiving "welfare" (i.e. subsidies from the CHIPS Act).
In an interesting twist, Intel is now investing in support for ARM in their new foundry business, and is one of the anchor investors for ARM's IPO. I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years they manufacture M-series CPUs for Apple.
Except they seem to be in bed with Intel with Intel’s upcoming Fab initiative.
If you're making an SOC for PC's you're directly competing with Intel and AMD for sockets not Apple. For PC's AMD has a fairly efficient and competitive product offering that runs all existing x86 software natively. Windows on Arm will be running everything through emulation which will degrade the differences, if any, in performance or battery life. It's going to be a pretty tough sell for any software developer to migrate to WOA given 1) the non-existent market and 2) good enough x86 CPUs that are readily available. The large vendors, like Lenovo and Dell, have very little incentive to invest R&D into a niche product category that doesn't offer anything substantially beyond what is already available.
Their talent currently works at Qualcomm.
Pls, don't be smart. They make GPUs for the x86 market.
Any change in the Windows market that excludes their GPUs on a future Windows license is a negative for them.
ARM SoC on PCs will negatively impact anyone who wants to do piece meal parts upgrades of CPUs, dGPUs, RAM, etc.
Those separate parts will go up in price due to worsening economies of scale.
Intel and QCOM aren't really competitors. Intel will probably manufacture QCOM mobile CPUs in the future.
segfaultdotorg
macrumors 68000
--Sent from my iPhone 17 with Qualcomm SnapDragon technology
Analog Kid
macrumors G3
Most recent I've seen is from May. I don't know if anything's changed since:
"Mobile-phone chip giant Qualcomm and carmaker Tesla have explored having Intel produce chips for them, then backed off, according to executives involved in the discussions. [...] Qualcomm dialed back after technical missteps by Intel, according to some of those involved in the interaction."
Analog Kid
macrumors G3
Actually what they did with that article was tell us they're going to name them with an X.
The headline: "Introducing an all-new naming convention"
Intel of course has to prove that its foundry works (both business- and technology-wise). This is a huge transformation for Intel. But there are rumors that QCOM is one of Intel's first potential "whale" customers. All of the big CPU design companies are desperate to reduce their dependency on TSMC.
Analog Kid
macrumors G3
And rumors that they were going to be but now aren't... Qualcomm is a potential customer, sure, but I might stop short of saying Intel will "probably" be their foundry.
rp2011
macrumors 68030
Good! Why should Intel be the only one? Intel didn't like this at all and slammed the subsidies. "Foreign chipmakers vying for U.S. subsidies will keep their valuable intellectual property on their own shores, ensuring that the most lucrative and cutting-edge manufacturing stays there."
I have ZERO pity for Intel.
What I do know is that they haven't stopped talking.
And they are right. TSMC is building some alibi fabs in the US (cashing in both state and federal subsidies), that will be several steps behind the cutting edge and probably never produce as much as they promised. They have also received massive subsidies from Taiwan for decades. The CHIPS Act was largely designed to level the playing field for semiconductor manufacturing in the US a bit.
They don't need your pity.
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This is cool and all, but the biggest problem isn't ARM-based chips, it's that Windows on ARM sucks and can't run Win32 x68 apps, which tons of legacy apps are still built on. Microsoft just doesn't put in the effort to bring Windows on ARM up to par, and it also refuses to just cut off Win32 development.
Microsoft is the roadblock here, not chip manufactures. ARM chips for PC's already exist.
Microsoft is the roadblock here, not chip manufactures. ARM chips for PC's already exist.
technole
macrumors 6502a
?
Microsoft already offers Surface Pro 9 in the Snapdragon ARM model called MS SQ3 and it has 5G built-in. It's going to work out just fine.
aParkerMusic
macrumors 6502
Apple’s chips are not “proof of concept”. Proof of concept refers to some sort of evidence that a concept is feasible. Apple’s chip technology is far beyond that. It’s not anywhere near conceptual, or merely proven feasible. It’s here and it’s real.
Analog Kid
macrumors G3
Apple proved that Intel could be beat in their core markets. They proved that x86 is vulnerable.
But Apple was a customer, not a competitor.
coffeemilktea
macrumors 68000
I hope they get better OS support than their mobile chips... imagine buying a brand-new laptop with a Qualcomm chip only for it to not support the latest version of Windows after a few years. 
