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Comment by why_only_15 | Hacker News Reader

> Apple, Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Google all use Arm's designs and technology as a foundation for their own processor chips that power essentially all of today's phones

My understanding was that Amazon/Qualcomm/Mediatek/Google use ARM's cores but that Apple had their own core design and just uses the ARM architecture under special license.

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For compute, yeah - but Id be extremely surprised if there weren't half a dozen Cortex R or M cores lurking in the uncore. I'd also be surprised if they used custom cores for smaller chips like for airpods/airtags.

> I'd also be surprised if they used custom cores for smaller chips like for airpods/airtags.

AirTags have an nRF52xxx SoC by Nordic. The only Apple silicon in them is the U1 UWB chip (which is also present in iPhone, HomePod, Watch, ...) which runs on a 16nm Cortex M4.

Recent AirPods run on H1 / H2 SoCs though, which are custom Apple chips. Wouldn't be surprised if they are built around the E-cores from the iPhone SoC.

Apple have actually been transitioning to their own tiny core called Chinook (from what I remember it's a tiny ARM64 microcontroller-sized core) running their RTKit.

Their SoCs have quite a number of Cortex-M cores (and Cortex-R for some of them) despite the existence of Chinook.

Yep, though both Samsung and Qualcomm have tried custom cores in the past. Today Apple’s really the only major player doing their own core designs.

Qualcomm is developing processors based upon custom cores designed by the acquired Nuvia team.

True, I guess I meant “shipping”. I’m excited to see what the Nuvia team deliver.

In the most technical sense of the word, the ISA is also a design.

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