that wouldn't work, and the reason is technical. I can't explain in simple words, too much typing.
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SoftBank May Be Selling Arm, But Apple Isn't Interested
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Softbank paid too much for ARM, way more than a Fabless design only Semiconductor Firm deserves, Softbank paid 32 Billion USD so now they must be hunting for someone ready to pay more than 32 Billion. Apple would not do it because they only use they only use the ARM ISA which has a perpetual license, so Apple doesn't have to renew it. Also Apple designed all the cores from scratch so they dont depend on yearly Cortex design by ARM. Qualcomm on the other hand actually does not design its cores so it needs to license those Cortex designs every yr. Even if they do buy ARM it won't affect Apple a bit. So its quite pointless for Apple to buy the ARM, Even if tomorrow ARM Decides to create a new ISA or more advanced ISA and Apple doesn't need it doesn't even need to license new one.
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Apples license is only for the ISA which is a perpetual license. So they dont buy it every yr. They only bought it once, Also apple designed all their Cores from scratch so they actually dont need the cortex designs by ARM, there is a reason why Apples designs are 2-3 yrs ahead of ARM itself and thus rest of the Industry.
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Not really. 70% of PCs ship with integrated graphics. The 30% that do ship with GPUs include things like the Radeon R5 430 2 GB that Dell ships in business desktops, which is pretty much the same as integrated graphics.
Between 1/3-1/2 of GPU shipments are in console. When you factor that in, AMD ships more GPUs than Nvidia.
The impression you get that Nvidia is huge comes from PC gaming, which actually isn't the whole story and is really a niche market.
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FRAND is done for standardization. For example, companies like Qualcomm get to have patents on cellular technology even to cellular technology should be a common, standardized good and you can't really make cellular phone hardware without infringing on those patents, so the compromise is that Qualcomm is forced to license their patents under FRAND terms.
ARM is not a standard. It's just Arm's proprietary ISA, and it merely happens to be quite popular. You can use any old other ISA, like MIPS or RISC-V or whatever. You can make a CPU without infringing on anything from Arm. So, FRAND doesn't matter.
"Industry standard" is a pundit term. It has no legal meaning.
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Competition would stop it. If ARM doesn't improve its CPU designs, then Apple gains an even higher lead, and companies like Nvidia, Samsung, Qualcomm will go back to making their own designs. Thus, ARM's new buyer loses on revenues. If ARM doesn't improve its ISA, then RISC-V starts gaining.
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This isn't 1997. The big money in selling CPUs isn't in desktop tower PCs. It's servers (where ARM is a threat) and embedded (where ARM is a threat).
Losing Apple also weakens Intel's prestige. And if there is any purpose to the Surface Pro X at all, it's to point a giant yellow alarm signal from Microsoft to Intel.
Why would Intel do that?
Oh, so now Apple is a CPU vendor? Apple doesn't have to do literally everything and the kitchen sink.
You do realize that Intel Macs lasted a decade and a half, right? Macs were on Intel longer than they were on PowerPC, and longer than they were on 68k. What makes you think they'll now suddenly switch faster?
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Moving to its own ISA would probably take years, and if Apple wanted to do that, this WWDC would've been a good moment to announce it. Instead, they're now having all Mac developers target the ARM ISA.
That might actually be good, NVIDIA is a D*** head company and it would rent seek on all Android devices once it buys ARM. Not a bad thing for APPLE.
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Designing a new ISA doesn't get you anything there isn't any technical advantage to designing a new ISA when the current is already the most optimised it already is RISC.
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Haha So you are saying a consortium will spend 40+ Billion dollars and make it open source and what will they tell their Investors?
Yes. I don't take "any old" to literally mean "old".
Who's to say Apple is not already working on their own architecture?
But why?
I'm sure they have prototypes of their own ISA, at least on paper. They might also have some prototype hardware running on it. But they clearly don't have any near-term plans to do that. If they didn't, they wouldn't ask, just this year, for developers to target arm64. Maybe ten years from now.
I would also expect they have prototype hardware running macOS and/or iOS on, say, RISC-V.
The question is: why? ARM is flexible and forward-thinking enough, at least for now.
Could be. There was a time when Nvidia dipped their toes into becoming more integral, with nForce… they lost interest in part because Intel made more and more portions of the former chipset part of its CPU package. It'd be funny if Nvidia's revenge, a decade later, would be to also compete on the CPU.
What's interesting about that is Samsung isn't even making BluRay players anymore, at least not for the U.S.
Samsung to stop making Blu-ray players
Samsung says it won't produce any new 1080p or 4K Blu-ray players for the US market.
www.cnet.com
Total Revenue of ARM is around $1.5 Billion, Soft bank bought it for 21 Times that. At this rate it will take 21 yrs for them to recover the investment alone. Who knows if we would still be using Von Neumann architecture after 20 yrs or not. I highly doubt that because we are almost running out of Nanometers, TSMC has already said the next tech they will be rolling out soon would be 3nm , which is like 15 Atoms of silicon , may be 2 or more cycles and we dont really know what to do next.
Soft Bank is turning into an unmitigated disaster starting with the scam that is/was WeWork. I did not realize they massively overpaid for ARM as well. The guy who founded WeWork is the ultimate shyster, just read any article about him and his bizarre business practices. The whole concept is dead in the water now that many people who went to offices now work at home. They are holding a ton of real estate they overpaid for that has been tremendously reduced in value.
I agree. I don’t think Apple will spend billions on anything like that.
The purchase price Beats surprised me. Apple is usually very much on the low end of purchase prices. But they get their money’s worth when they do.
cool if nvdia and aapl cooperated on fanless discreet gpu for aapl products
gpu minimum specs - gtx 2070 power, easy integration in all new aapl computers
gpu minimum specs - gtx 2070 power, easy integration in all new aapl computers
Berkshire Hathaway should make a bid if the price is right. This is a Buffett type investment. A company that does nothing except license a technology is a great place to be. Buffett loves gate-keeper type investments that generate cash.
Remember the Nvidia graphics chip bug that haunted many MacBook Pros years ago. I'm sure there are other more recent irritants but that one was a big reliability and thus a image problem for Apple.
WeWork guy a conman plain and simple. He sold real estate as technology, and stole money directly from the investors into his personal account.
name one? This is just not done in the business world anymore and most certainly not in the extremely fast-pace tech business.