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CalChris

There is also a response from ARM, The Case for Licensed Instruction Sets.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140926222155/http://www.linley...

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It is appalling how stupid whoever at ARM must have been, to respond and thus bring attention to RISC-V.

Back then, RISC-V was not anywhere as well-known as it is today.

Sort of like when Ballmer-era Microsoft declared war on Linux and GPL.

Stupid?! The type of reader paying $500/year for the Microprocessor Report (where this response article appeared) already knew. (Similarly if they were motivated to get it free or took time to read it through their university, company, pirate it, etc.) And the ARM response you'll didn't mention RISC-V by name specifically.

The notion of an open source entity building an open or semi-open ecosystem cannibalizing even a low-end player was already happening in phone operating systems (Android/Linux vs Windows); a parallel dynamic wasn't lost on anyone looking at the hardware/ISA side, phone or non-phone.

I don't see this as any more foolish than Bill Gates making the case for software licensing vs free software at the dawn of the PC revolution. You may disagree with one party or the other, but each laying out their case is a marketing must. If you want to compete at the low end, you have to explain your value proposition vs "free".

And 40 years later, after FOSS folks thought to have won, everyone is going with open core, finally realising why businesses don't want anything to do with GPL like licensing.

So anyone that thinks RISC-V isn't going to trail a similar path, is fooling themselves.

>everyone

For some definition of everyone.

I'm not even sure what side he thinks he is on. RISC-V isn't an open core, it's an open specification of the interface (only) between hardware and software. And it's not GPL, it's CC-BY-4.0 (BSD/MIT-like).

It's also a decent thing to do. In science it is actually expected behavior.

Here's the 2014 conference debate between industry and academics that probably precipitated the exchange:

"Proprietary versus Open Instruction Sets" https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/sendag/papers/micro2016_2.pd... (pdf)

--4th Workshop on Computer Architecture Research Directions, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7542457 Mark D. Hill; Dave Christie; David Patterson; Joshua J. Yi; Derek Chiou; Resit Sendag

And 2015 full video recording of the debate between Patterson and Christie: "CARD 2015 Mini-Panel #1: Open Source versus Proprietary ISAs" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=novCbl4Wq3I

None of those arguments have held up over the last 10 years. RISC-V has all of the things they say you need.

Apple has a licensing deal with ARM through 2040, but they might get tired of the license fees at some point.

Source?

GPT-4o retrieved this for me: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/09/06/apple-inks-new-deal-arm...

So, not a source.

There's some claims in this article and in the routers article they use as source, but they're unrelated.

err...

> ... we have entered into a new long-term agreement with Apple that extends beyond 2040, continuing our longstanding relationship of collaboration with Apple and Apple’s access to the Arm architecture.

Arm's IPO F-1/A.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1973239/000119312523...

Which was linked in the MacRumors link.

Yes, I had seen that.

>agreement

and

>access to the Arm architecture.

Is vague language that could mean about anything.

E.g. it could mean RAND ("reasonable" and "non-discriminatory").

Namely, the parent specifically claimed:

>Apple has a licensing deal with ARM through 2040

The vague language is insufficient to support the claim.

No.

> we have entered into a new long-term agreement with Apple that extends beyond 2040, continuing … Apple’s access to the Arm architecture.

Clearly says that the agreement continues Apple’s access to the Arm architecture beyond 2040. That’s what a licensing deal is.

This is an important disclosure. Any attempt to pass something less than a licensing deal with this wording wouldn’t get pass the lawyers.

IANAL. With that out of the way,

That's not even a contract but a public statement. A lawyer would wipe her ass with it.

We do not get to see the actual agreement, and this "access" could very well mean the RAND I mentioned, i.e. that they won't be arbitrarily denied a license.

Incidentally, the key word "license" is remarkably not included in the language used.

They are one of the ARM founders, their licensing deal is a special sauce no one else gets it.

Source?

Google is your friend.

I've looked at this several times and have never found a source that confirms what you have said.

Do you have a source or not?

Narrator: There was no source.

Nah, I just don't want to baby feed people on the Internet.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/06/09/how-arm-has-alrea...

https://appleinsider.com/articles/08/07/30/arm_reports_finge...

Neither of those say what your comment implied - that they get a special deal and that’s because they are a founder.

You should be ashamed of yourself. I hope you have your own business or are you "baby fed" by your boss.

I don't get why that guy didn't just link to a source, but I found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Holdings#Founding

    The company was founded in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd
    and structured as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple,
    and VLSI Technology.

Which links a blog post and an LA Times news article as a source: https://community.arm.com/arm-community-blogs/b/architecture..., https://web.archive.org/web/20210325060916/https://www.latim...

Yes, Apple is an Arm founder.

The comment implies, though, that they get a special deal because they are a founder. Neither Wikipedia nor the linked articles say that.

There won't be a source because the details of the current commercial contract between Apple and Arm will be highly confidential.

In any event, it's vanishingly unlikely that Apple gets some special unique rights to IP created in the 2000s as a result of having a big shareholding in Arm in 1991 which they sold completely in the 1990s.

Yes, Apple probably gets a great deal but because they are a huge, enormously high-profile customer who has worked closely with Arm on the development of their latest IP.

Ah sorry, I misunderstood, my bad.

I think your analysis sounds good: Apple certainly gets special deals, but those deals don't have anything to do with having been a major share-holder of ARM some 30 years ago.

My apologies too - didn't mean to sound critical!

Thanks for your comment on the analysis. I see this all the time, often in even more extreme form, such as Apple gets it all for free! You can look at Arm's accounts in the 1990s and prove that Apple never got it for free.

Also this deal until 2040 (signed nine months ago) is crazy. I can't imagine why Apple would sign such a thing unless they got really phenomenal terms.

And why would Arm give such amazing terms?

Not because Apple was an Arm founder 35 years ago.

It's probably because Apple showed Arm a prototype of a Mac or iPhone running on "Apple Silicon gen 2" aka RISC-V.

It's such an obvious hit piece by a competitor where many of the arguments boil down to essentially "they did it differently to us and hence they're wrong".

The main argument may be "we want to keep making money."

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