Apple has an Architecture License with ARM.  Basically the broadest license that ARMS sells.  If you didn&#x27;t know this, ARM was founded as a joint venture between Apple and Acorn. Their history goes back to the day the company was created. (ARM Chips powered the first PDA, the newton.)<p>Your assertion that their license will not permit them to alter the architecture is wrong.  This is true of the vast majority of ARM licenses, but not Apple&#x27;s.<p>They can take the ARM ISA and extend it in any way they want, and they can take ARM cores and adjust them, or design their own-- they have already done all of this (though to a small degree, not enough to be called a &quot;new ISA&quot;.)