" It's an open secret that ARM was (and still is) selling the CPU design at a discount if you integrated their Mali (GPU)."
Why is that bad? Not only it's common business practice (the more you buy from us, the cheaper we sell), it also makes sense from the support perspective. Support the integration between their cores and a different GPU would be more work for them than integration of their cores with their own GPUs.
That's why companies expand to adjacent markets: efficiency.
A completely different thing would be to say: "if you want our latest AXX core, you have to buy our latest Mali GPU". That's bundling, and that's illegal.
The AMX is an accelerator block... If you concluded otherwise, your reverse-engineering skills are not great...
Let me repeat this: part of the ARM architectural license says that you can't modify the ISA. You have to implement a whole subset (the manual says what's mandatory and what's optional), and only that. This is, as I've been saying, publicknowledge. This is how it works. And there are very good reasons for this, like avoiding fragmentation and losing control of their own ISA.
No. Precisely the Tegra SoC within the Nintendo Switch (X1) uses ARM Cores. Specifically A57 and A53. NVIDIA's project to develop their own v8.2 ARM-based chip is called Denver.
That's like saying that my Intel CPU comes with an NVIDA Turing AI acceleration extension. The instructions the CPU can run on an Apple ARM-based CPU is all ARM ISA. That's in the license arrangement, if you fail to pass ARM's compliance tests (which include not adding your own instructions, or modifying the ones included) you can't use ARM's license.
Please, stop spreading nonsense. All of this is public knowledge.
"and may just fork off on the ARMv8.3 spec, adding a few instructions here or there"
No, they may not. People keep suggesting these kinds of things, but part of the license agreement is that you can't modify the ISA. Only ARM can do that.
The main source of revenue for ARM is, by far, royalties. Licenses are paid once, royalties are paid by unit shipped. And they shipped billions last year.
Revenue is not $300, we don't know what ARM's revenue is because it hasn't been published since 2016. And back then it was like $1.5 billion. $300 million was net income. Again, in 2016.
I think you've already been adequately corrected on your misconceptions about ARM's CPU design teams.
As I said, I'm on my second FAANG. The "very rare individuals" you mention are hired L9 or above. That is, distinguished engineers+. You don't get to L9 with "a valuable technical contribution", you get there because people know who you are, you have strong network of connections within the industry, and you are in a position to make strategic decisions. It's very much not a technical position, it's borderline executive. Let's put it this way, the people with that kind of compensation, you know who they are. It's never an anonymous whizz kid who's very good at solving technical problems, it's the guy who hired them and/or knows how to direct their work.
As you said, you don't know me and I don't know you, so I don't have a reason to doubt your word. If you say you've met engineers who get that kind of compensation, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Everyone I've met or I've known to be in that level of compensation were the people I already knew were making that kind of money.
And that's not the worst. The worst is that all of this was well known by pretty much everyone in the country. I've been hearing about these dealings, the King's affairs, and generalized corruption in the Royal House for 30 years (pretty much ever since I started paying attention to these things).
Not only the country knew of the King's dealings with Saudis and other fascist dictators, they used those dealings to make a case in favor of the Monarchy. "Of course, he'll take a cut! It's the least he should get after sealing that multi-million deal!" went the general conversation (among the population, of course, the media remained silent at all times). This should give people a taste for how Spain works, and the attitude of their citizens.
Another interesting thing that nobody has mentioned in the press yet is that maintenance and servicing (staff) of most if not all of the Monarchy assets (houses, palaces, boats!) is paid by Patrimonio Nacional (National Heritage; supposedly in charge of public assets of cultural and historical relevance), not by Casa Real (Royal Household; in charge of the Monarchy expenses). I.e.: a significant part of the budget allocated to public affairs is redirected to the private affairs of the Monarchy. Then they will claim "but relatively speaking, it's not that expensive", when a significant portion of the cost is hidden behind a different institution.
Competitors are also multi-billion corporations. I do work for one of those big multi-billion corporations, it's my second, and I've also worked for others not so big. Only newbie engineers fresh out of college believe the myth of the genius engineer who gets grossly overcompensated because they're so smart. You can find 10s of thousands of brilliant engineers in any of these companies, that's the bottom line. Not a single one of them is, on their own, irreplaceable. Specially valuable individuals get awarded distinctions like "fellow" or "distinguished". They're valuable, more than anything else, because of their contacts and rapport within the industry. It's never technical competency; not that they're technically incompetent, but most of their underlings will likely be more technically competent than them (if they're smart, after all, they will do the technical work). If you haven't figure this out yet, don't worry, you'll get there.
Do you think a multi-billion corporation would pay a low level employee an extra million just because they can? You may overestimate the value of individual engineers, big corporations don't. That's how they become big. The money they make is the difference between the value of your work and the money you make. The smartest and best connected people in the company are working to make that gap as wide as possible.
Apple is a small, although significant, part of ARM's total market share. And that 25x is, as I said, without taking into account the premium. If you do, and there are good arguments to do so, the valuation growth is 35x, in almost 20 years.
Regarding innovation, ARM's been at it since 1990. I'm sure it's not the same now as it was 30 years ago, but we're well past the point where one can reasonably fear it to be an unsustainable business. Last time I heard numbers, they were talking about more than 50 billion devices shipped with ARM IP in them. That is a massive market.
You don't answer my question. Why wouldn't licensing businesses work as publicly traded companies? What's the fundamental difference, specially in an increasingly fabless market, between a company licensing IP to other companies and a company selling productized IP to consumers?
ARM was publicly traded between 1998 and 2016. In that period its value multiplied about 25x, not counting the premium of the acquisition. Could you elaborate, please? Where do you see the disaster? (Honest question).
Definitely in the short run, because of the understandable fear from NVIDIA's competitors to use their (now) technology. Maybe in the mid run if those fears begin to crystallize. Unlikely in the long run, I'd assume NVIDIA would spin ARM off before killing it entirely, buying ARM would be a multi-billion investment.
They can also design their own ISA. An ISA is a document, they can write their own. Now, can you think of reasons why they wouldn't want to do it that don't also apply to MIPS?
This can happen anywhere in the world. In order to remove a CEO, you have to follow the proper process. Allen Wu claims that the process wasn't followed and, therefore, his dismissal was illegal and void in effect.
It's not like he was dismissed and he just didn't leave his office. He's challenging the legality of his dismissal.
Socialist + "extreme centre" atbest. And that's the executive. The legislature and the judicial are still packed and dominated by francoists, respectively. And don't get me started on the military...
Spain was an openly fascist country that made the transition into a covertly fascist one in the late 70s. It wasn't the democratic forces who forced the transition, it was the fascists who half-conceded it because they wanted a halo of legitimacy in the international stage.
This is corporate mindset 101. Questions like "why don't you do X" make no sense to a corporation. The question is always "why should I do X". Every decision has a cost and a benefit, and things happen when benefits outweight the costs proportionally to the implicit risk.
Companies have been successfully working with ARM for a loooong time. It's a massive, well supported, ecosystem that works quite well (no customer complains about delayed/cancelled products related to ARM's performance). What does RISC-V offer that's worth jumping into the void?
That's startup territory, you won't see big companies betting big on RISC-V for a while, if ever.