Is there anyone to pick up the pieces?

Apple: obviously not. but then, ARM charges an arm and a leg and they have a history of architecture swaps...

Amazon: with Graviton, very doubtful

Intel: um

AMD: see Intel

Microsoft/Meta/Alphabet: ...maybe? If they started today, they could have a reasonable product by 2030

ARM: 1% probability of a skunkworks product to have the best risc-v CPU once they're something people actually want

NVidia: wanted to buy ARM, announced ARM CPUs like yesterday - but why not, except that people don't care?

Qualcom: most likely option...?

> Apple: obviously not. but then, ARM charges an arm and a leg and they have a history of architecture swaps...

Given Apple’s very special relationship with ARM, and their culture of control, and them literally being a flagship standard bearer on the performance segment I’d be shocked if they paid anywhere near market rate (not that their licensing is even market-available but you get what I’m saying).

Apple pays nothing, because they do not license ARM cores in any way, instead having a full royalty-free license for ARM ISA (and afaik covering updates too) since before ARM got big. Samsung used to have one, no idea if they still have one, but the mismanagement of the unit that built their custom ARM designs might have killed the whole venture.

This isn’t true. Apple paid licence fees for the very first ARM Ltd processors - ARM would have had no income if they hadn’t.

And there is no way that any company gets a ‘forever’ and ‘all future IP’ license just because they had an early shareholding.

The "nothing" probably refers to royalties which is true for architectural licensees like Apple. They instead pay for that license which is not sold per-CPU.

It was very clear that they meant nothing at all.

> Apple pays nothing, because they do not license ARM cores in any way, instead having a full royalty-free license for ARM ISA (and afaik covering updates too) since before ARM got big.

I will admit to being a bit hyperbolic there. Compared to normal ARM licensing, it's way less.

Meanwhile I recall start of RISC-V hype being, among other things, Western Digital dropping a ton of investment money into it just to escape ARM license costs.

We all get a bit hyperbolic at times! Yes, I'm sure it's a lot less than most customers pay.

I remember the WD announcement. They have open sourced the cores now I think. If you're shipping millions of drives those fees will add up.

For values of "now" equal to 2019

https://github.com/westerndigitalcorporation/swerv_eh1