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MacRumors: "Report: Apple Pays Less Than 30 Cents in Royalties to Arm Per Chip"
(www.macrumors.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Probably because they're mainly licensing the instruction set. I'm pretty sure they don't use the arm designed cores.
The fun fact is that it actually costs more to do this for the licence at least ISA licence is more expensive than the core net list licence, which is more expensive than the implemented core design licence.
If that translates to the royalties, then Apple would pay more per chip than Samsung, and they are paying more than someone using a stock core.
Why? Because they can.
Because anyone whom wants an ISA licence to design their own core from scratch has a ton of money to spend and thus arm charges them more.
Do you have a source? IIRC, the move to custom cores was explicitly cited as a concern for ARM's revenue.
I tried looking, as i've read the same thing before and am pretty sure he's correct, but could not find the source. But I think this should give us a clue of arms value to apple.
"Apple was among a number of large technology companies that that on Tuesday invested $735 million in Arm's initial public offering."
https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-inks-new-long-term-deal-with-arm-chip-technology-filing-2023-09-05/
Arm makes money from Arm ISA from:
License Fees are an upfront payment to gain access to Arm ISA. The License Fees for ALAs (Architectural License Agreements) are far more expensive than for TLAs (Technology License Agreements, i.e. stock cores)
Royalties are a % per chip sold which are reflective of the level of Arm IP used. The Royalties for ALAs are far lower than for TLAs. That's because TLAs holders are using far more Arm IP, whereas ALA holders design the cores/IP themselves
Overall royalties make up a far larger portion of Arm's revenue, e.g. for 2022: $1.7B in royalties vs $1B for "non-royalties"
Hence why Arm has been increasingly concerned about the rise in ALA holders, especially Qualcomm switching back to their ALA
Sources:
Arm's statements from SoftBank's Annual Reports
AnandTech, it is very old but Arm hasn't changed their business model for ages, just the termology