IIRC they received a free, non-revokable licence in perpetuity, in return for IP contributions in co-founding ARM with Acorn.
For the original IP back then yeah. Maybe for the first couple of cycles (all of the stuff on the 3-6 year roadmap that had been laid out) . But huge give away for all possible future IP forever. Errr that would be almost criminally illegal misconduct on ARM lawyers side. Don't even know what you have ... how can you rationally price it away for some short term cash.
That old 32-bit , thumb opcode stuff is exactly what Apple has chucked into the waste can at this point. For the Newton it was useful. At this point is probably not much. Apple gots their money's worth and more.
Apple Silicon ARM + Apple GPU or AMD GPU, Vs. Nvidia Silicon ARM + Nvidia GPU could be an interesting next era of computing rivalry.
Highly likely not going to happen. Nvidia ARM + Nvidia GPU is more than likely going to be in the Server space. ( e.g., Nvidia's supercomputer product they have now which uses AMD server chips. chuck those for all Nvidia CPU+GPU+Interconnect+Network. ). Apple isn't going into that space. Even with the Mac Pro SoC. ( macOS doesn't want to chase into that Linux server dominated space. )
Samsung ARM + AMD GPU will likely land in Windows 10 space before anything Nvidia does. That would be closer to Apple space.
In Mac Pro space I doubt Apple GPU is going to be any big player other than serving as a foundation for running iOS/iPadOS apps in compatibility mode and default embedded GPU for entry Mac Pro configuration with no slot usage.
(the role where the W5500 is now. )
Where Intel and AMD go with X86-64, and Iris / AMD / Nvidia GPU is going to be an interesting parallel world.
If Intel doesn't fix their internal FUBARs quicker they will crumble at the HPC end of the scale . They are past the "hair on fire" stage. That Board of directors needs to seriously wake up... gaming the books for short term quarterly gains and stock price goosing is even more 'wrong track' if this deal goes though .
