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by detaro
3424 days ago
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Licensing x86/AMD64 requires licenses from both Intel and AMD, which probably would be quite expensive, even if they can threaten to go ARM otherwise, and engineers with the low-level experience probably are way harder to find than for ARM (where quite a few companies hold various levels of licensing, and Apple likely already has quite a lot of talent inhouse) |
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Eh, the instruction set doesn't matter that much for modern CPU designers (within reason). Apple's in house expertise came (in part) from their acquisition of P.A. Semi and their PowerPC engineers; Apple it seems immediately redirected them to working on ARM designs. And the Transmeta guys proved that a third party can put out an interesting x86 chip if you can get access to the licenses.