Arm exists, it is unknown how much tech apple gets from Arm.

Arm licenses their designs to everybody. They are okay, but you are never going to make market leading processors by using the Arm designs.

The M1 and M2 were beating the best-in-class i7 when they were relased IIRC

Apple took the ARM base design (they licensed it), and then they modified and tweaked it.

You get the ARM ISA, and compilers that work for ARM will compile to Apple Silicon. It's just that the actual hardware you get, is better than the base design, and therefore beats other ARM processors in benchmarks.

It's more than that. They have an unlimited license to arm designs, and can change them as they see fit, since they were an early investors (or something along those lines). Other manufacturers can't get these terms, or if they can, it will be prohibtly expensive

Apple has an architectural license that lets them build their own ARM cores:

https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/finance/arm-...

It is very unlikely Apple uses anything from ARM’s core designs, since that would require paying an additional license fee and Apple was able to design superior cores using its architectural license.

Yep, Apple was a significant early investor in ARM. https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/09/05/apple-arm-have-be...

The thing about Apple having a “special license” due to being a partial founder of Arm is an urban legend. They have an architectural license, just like several other companies making custom Arm CPUs do.

Yeah, why would ARM prevent other companies from paying more for the better license?

All they care about is that companies buy an ARM license, not that they use the boilerplate ARM CPU design.

Those designs are there to make it easier for companies to make ARM-based chips who would otherwise never be able to design their own.

Then why are they so shy about granting Qualcomm a license?

Qualcomm has a lot of money and Arm wants it. They’re not shy, but greedy.

> Apple took the ARM base design (they licensed it), and then they modified and tweaked it.

More likely it was derived from PWRficient, or a clean sheet design that took lessons from it.

And tsmc (and therefore asml etc), usually apple reserves the newest upcoming node for their own production.

cpu yes, but what about the rest of the iphone?

They design much more in house than any other smartphone brand, except maybe Samsung.

CPU, GPU, neural processor, image signal processor, U1 chip for device tracking, Secure Enclave for biometrics, a 5G modem (only used in the 16e so far)…

They don’t manufacture the chips in house of course. They contract that out to TSMC and other companies.