Apple Possibly Exploring Open-Source Alternative to ARM Architecture

<i>Tom&#x27;s Hardware theorizes that if Apple were to adopt the open-source instruction set of RISC-V, it may save the company money because it wouldn&#x27;t need to pay Arm a license fee for its instruction set.</i><p>The money Apple pays ARM is insignificant.<p>More likely in my opinion, they are exploring RISC-V as a base from which to build their own proprietary chips. There is nothing &quot;open&quot; about Apple.

It&#x27;s confusing that RISC-V is so often described as &quot;open source&quot;. The specs (ISA + extensions) are open and free from patents (at least as far as we know). While there are a large number of open source implementations available, many of these, however, implement only a simple microcontroller-style RV32I core.<p>The cores available in &quot;large&quot; physical chips you can buy today (XuanTie C906 on the Allwinner D1 SoC, SiFive U54&#x2F;74 e.g. on the BeagleV and HiFive Unmatched) are proprietary. I think one of the few companies that open sourced their commercially used cores is Western Digital (&quot;swerv&quot; cores - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;westerndigitalcorporation&#x2F;swerv_eh1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;westerndigitalcorporation&#x2F;swerv_eh1</a>), but these are also RV32I microcontroller-class CPUs.