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Comment by bydo | Hacker News Reader

Despite the linkbait-y You-Won't-BELIEVE-What-Happens-Next title (spoilers: the executive is SVP of Hardware Technologies Johny Srouji, in charge of microprocessor design), an interesting article.

I worry that Bloomberg isn't sure if it wants its website to be Buzzfeed or the Atlantic.

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Either way, it has tons of good original writing, which nails one of the important points to ensure your survival as a publisher. I mean, there's also these Bloomberg boxes that are a nice sideline...

We changed the linkbaity title to the subtitle.

Submitters: the HN guidelines ask you not to use the article title when it is misleading or linkbait: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

that and fluff piece tone is rather annoying. I'm sure Johny Srouij is a highly competent Apple SVP considering their standards. But correct me if I'm wrong, as far as I know Apple's custom SoC's are still mostly a collection of licenced ARM IP blocks contracted out to either either TSMC or Samsung. Credit when credit's due, but the author goes a bit overboard, in praise.

Have you noticed the fact that no other Samsung chip has reached the single thread performance of the A7 in iPhone 5s? The architecture may be licensed but the chip design is not.

I was quite surprised by the analyst's assertion that Samsung has the lead. Certainly on manufacturing (especially since Apple doesn't actually manufacture them) but their chips in general?

He didn't define his criteria for "best". If it's $/core, for example, then Samsung probably is better. But I doubt Apple cares about that particular metric.

Apple has an architectural license from ARM, which allows them to design their own cores based on the ARM instruction set. They used ARM cores in the beginning, but they're designing their own cores now. (The GPU is still licensed)

It would be really interesting to see if Apple picks up, say, RISC-V or does their own ISA once their ARM license expires. (Does it expire?)

Unless there are some major technical advantage in doing so, Apple is unlikely to move away from ARM. The ARM architecture license is far cheaper then the design license. ( Since you have to do more work to design it yourself rather then buying the blueprint )

And according to RealWorldTech, ARMv8 is simply a work of art.

You're wrong about the cost of the licenses. The architectural license is the most costly one. It comes with a risk to let others make implementations of your ISA ...

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9824/more-on-apples-a9x-soc

Notice the annotated die shot chip works provides. Even if it were true that "Apple's custom SoC's are still mostly a collection of licenced ARM IP blocks " that would constitute only a small fraction of what is in the SOC overall.

Why can't it split the difference.

Also Buzzfeed has grown into a serious news operation, investigating many stories (Tennis Fixing), and breaking others.

The sad thing is there's not much daylight between Buzzfeed and the Atlantic anymore.

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