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I can imagine a lot of ARM engineers being frustrated at seeing their cores being used in stupid ways for decades to finally flex what they can do (outside of Apple).
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But really how different is TSMC than VLSI making the ARM1? By your logic I would say that ARM has already delivered it's own silicon product.
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Agreed, it will be _very_ interesting to see what waves this causes. It would be like TSMC deciding to make and sell their own CPUs, now ARM is directly competing with some of their clients.
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Eh, I'm not so sure it'll be that big a deal. The whole supply chain is so twisted and tangled all the way up and down. Shuffling out one piece doesn't seem like it will, on its own, be so major. Samsung made the chips for the iPhone, then made their own phone, then Apple designed their own chips made by TSMC, now Apple is exploring the possibility of having Samsung make those chips again.

Also, it takes a willful ignorance of history for ARM to claim this is the first time they've manufactured hardware. I mean, maaaaybe, teeeeechnically that's true, but ARM was the Acorn RISC Machine, and Acorn was in the hardware business...at least as much as Apple was for the first iPhone.

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Do they need to higher Design Verification engineers for this?

Thats a huge cost compared to the average RTL jockey

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ARM already had tons of DV engineers. No company would license the RTL or any IP unless it has already been run through millions of simulations in DV.
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What would be the real advantage of doing that?
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