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brokencode parent
Outsourced to who? The only companies with the engineers you’d need are the other CPU makers like Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and Nvidia. And none of them make a CPU as efficient as Apple does.

skeezyboy
cpu yes, but what about the rest of the iphone?
brokencode OP
They design much more in house than any other smartphone brand, except maybe Samsung.

CPU, GPU, neural processor, image signal processor, U1 chip for device tracking, Secure Enclave for biometrics, a 5G modem (only used in the 16e so far)…

They don’t manufacture the chips in house of course. They contract that out to TSMC and other companies.

ChrisGreenHeur
Arm exists, it is unknown how much tech apple gets from Arm.
brokencode OP
Arm licenses their designs to everybody. They are okay, but you are never going to make market leading processors by using the Arm designs.
skeezyboy
The M1 and M2 were beating the best-in-class i7 when they were relased IIRC
PaulRobinson
Apple took the ARM base design (they licensed it), and then they modified and tweaked it.

You get the ARM ISA, and compilers that work for ARM will compile to Apple Silicon. It's just that the actual hardware you get, is better than the base design, and therefore beats other ARM processors in benchmarks.

stinkbeetle
> Apple took the ARM base design (they licensed it), and then they modified and tweaked it.

More likely it was derived from PWRficient, or a clean sheet design that took lessons from it.

diffuse_l
It's more than that. They have an unlimited license to arm designs, and can change them as they see fit, since they were an early investors (or something along those lines). Other manufacturers can't get these terms, or if they can, it will be prohibtly expensive
fennecbutt
And tsmc (and therefore asml etc), usually apple reserves the newest upcoming node for their own production.

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