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From: whygee on 28 Apr 2010 18:25
Nico Coesel wrote:
> Austin,
> Pleeeeeaase have lunch with marketing tomorrow and convince them to
> get a cortex-M3 or cortex-M0 in a Spartan!

Nico, you're asking for troubles !

Noone should let the marketing dept. create a product on a napkin,
Austin should ask the real engineers ;-)

yg
--
http://ygdes.com / http://yasep.org
From: Symon on 28 Apr 2010 19:58
On 4/28/2010 6:11 PM, Muzaffer Kal wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:21:33 +0100, Symon<symon_brewer(a)hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>> I wonder what will happen if Apple buy ARM?
>>
>> http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/article-23826703-city-aflame-with-takeover-talk-of-arm-and-xstrata.do
>>
>> �A deal would make a lot of sense for Apple,� said one trader. �That
>> way, they could stop ARM's technology from ending up in everyone else's
>> computers and gadgets.�
>
> The agreements signed before the acquisition survive the acquisition
> and if the licensees had any legal sense, there would be a clause
> which states if the new owner couldn't support the licensees, they
> would get a full rights perpetual license (in case ARM went bankrupt
> and/or got acquired by someone who doesn't want to support the license
> business anymore)

Wow, we have a lawyer posting. On CAF, no less. Can I claim my first
amendment rights if I use hyperbole on you? Or will you use Justice Eady
on me?
From: Symon on 28 Apr 2010 20:06
On 4/28/2010 6:12 PM, Nico Coesel wrote:
> Symon<symon_brewer(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>> way, they could stop ARM's technology from ending up in everyone else's
>> computers and gadgets.�
>
> Apple buying ARM makes no sense at all. Why bother if you can get a
> license for almost nothing. What Apple wants at this moment is to be
> able to design their own SoCs for a tighter fit to their wishes in
> order to reduce power consumption.
>

What part of "stop ARM's technology from ending up in everyone else's
computers and gadgets.� would make no sense at all? And how do you know
what makes sense for Apple? Have you been drinking German lager in
Redwood City? Or are you on the Heinekin?

Love, Syms.

From: Symon on 28 Apr 2010 20:08
On 4/28/2010 5:28 PM, Pete Fraser wrote:
> "Symon"<symon_brewer(a)hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:hr9nai$9rp$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...
>
>> I wonder what will happen if Apple buy ARM?
>
> There would be an interesting symmetry to that.
> IIRC the original ARM (by Acorn RISC Machines)
> owed quite a bit of its architecture to the 6502 used
> in the BBC micro (and also in early Apples).
>
>
That's going back a bit. I remember the $zero page indirect addressing!


From: Patrick Maupin on 28 Apr 2010 21:31
On Apr 28, 6:58 pm, Symon <symon_bre...(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/28/2010 6:11 PM, Muzaffer Kal wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:21:33 +0100, Symon<symon_bre...(a)hotmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >> I wonder what will happen if Apple buy ARM?
>
> >>http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-business/article-23826703-city....
>
> >> “A deal would make a lot of sense for Apple,” said one trader. “That
> >> way, they could stop ARM's technology from ending up in everyone else's
> >> computers and gadgets.”
>
> > The agreements signed before the acquisition survive the acquisition
> > and if the licensees had any legal sense, there would be a clause
> > which states if the new owner couldn't support the licensees, they
> > would get a full rights perpetual license (in case ARM went bankrupt
> > and/or got acquired by someone who doesn't want to support the license
> > business anymore)
>
> Wow, we have a lawyer posting. On CAF, no less. Can I claim my first
> amendment rights if I use hyperbole on you? Or will you use Justice Eady
> on me?

Is the hyperbole the European version of the superbowl? I guess it
has that funny round football in it. :-)

Anyway, the company I work for went through something very similar
with a DSP architecture; the licensor got out of that business, and
the licensee (us) are able to continue selling it without support.
How brain-dead would it be to go through all the cost of building a
chip, that you then aren't allowed to make and sell simply because
somebody bought a company you licensed some of the IP from?

In any case, I have a different theory about Apple. The best kind of
ARM license (which very few companies have) is an "architecture
license" which allows you to implement the arm ISA how you see fit.
(The standard ARM "implementation license" makes you take and use
ARM's RTL. Your synthesizer can optimize the RTL, but you can't
change it at all.)

Architecture licenses are very expensive, and even they sometimes come
loaded with restrictions. For example, a recent press release says
"Infineon is an ARM partner that has an ARM architecture license
specifically for security applications." Think about that -- they
don't need to use ARM's RTL; but their result is limited in field of
use. Other restrictions in the architecture license involve whether
you can add additional instructions, etc.

Marvell has an architecture license (via Intel via DEC) that was
negotiated before ARM got wildly popular, so chances are it's pretty
liberal. There are rumors that Apple has one as well, but maybe it
has restrictions like the Infineon one. Certainly, if the rumors are
correct it was negotiated within the last 3 years.

I can well imagine Apple going to ARM to negotiate a more full-
featured license, then ARM telling them how much it would cost, then
Apple threatening to just buy them. So, maybe it's just a negotiating
posture.

But there are other reasons Apple might want ARM. These include
things like getting all their designers -- not just hardware
designers, but also groups like their compiler team. Apple would
probably be happy to mate up ARM's compiler with LLVM. In short, it
might just be a really good match at a lot of levels.

Regards,
Pat
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