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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, August 30 2012 @ 06:01 PM EDT |
Like the invention of rectangles and rounded corners, there
is a lot of revisionist Apple history here.
No Apple do not design SOCs - ARM design the CPU area,
Nvidia and others the GPU area, yet others the wireless area
etc, then TSMC, Samsung and others do the integration and
manufacturing. Apple just specify what they want. It is like
going into a pizza restaurant and ordering a specific
combination of special toppings. This doesn't mean you have
made or created the pizza - only that you have selected a
set of options from a menu.
Apple never co-founded the original ARM chip itself, nor did
they contribute anything significant to the chip design
other than providing investment and specifying requirements
for the ARM chip used in the Apple Newton PDA when the ARM
chip was selected by Apple for the Newton.
A joint venture between ARM, VLSI, and Apple to manufacture
the chip for the Newton PDA was co-founded with Apple, not
ARM or the ARM chip. Apple didn't and doesn't own, nor did
it contribute to the IP of ARM Holdings.
The ARM chip was designed and produced by Acorn Computers -
a small UK based home and school computer builder and
builder of the BBC Micro which designed it from scratch as a
16/32 bit replacement for the 6502 processor chip. The Acorn
RISC Machine project began in 1983 and produced the chips by
1985. Acorn ran into financial difficulties in 1984 and in
1985 Olivetti took a controlling stake in Acorn Computers.
Acorn Computers company restructured and renamed as ARM
Holdings (Advanced RISC Machines) in November 1990, and this
company undertook a joint venture with VLSI and Apple to
produce chips for the Apple Newton with Apple and VLSI
taking a stake. It was the joint venture for manufacture of
the chip for the Apple Newton, not ARM itself that was co-
founded with Apple and VLSI.
In 1998 Advanced RISC Machines Ltd went public and was
listed on the London Stock Exchange, with lot of other
companies taking a shareholding, including Apple and later
Intel. In 1999 Apple's shareholding was 14%.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, August 31 2012 @ 03:20 AM EDT |
ARM was always a separate and independent company which
started out as Acorn Computers and its name was later
changed
to ARM Ltd and ARM Holdings.
Apple's only involvement with ARM were:
1) In 1990 Apple, VLSI, and ARM co-founded a Joint Venture
company to manufacture ARM chips for the Apple Newton. Apple
never owned or contributed to any part of ARM's IP or know
how.
2) When ARM was floated in 1998 Apple bought a minority
share
in it, as did many other companies (like Intel for example).[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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