An interesting point about ARM is unlike the x86 world, there are many ARM
chip makers.
The four "big" producers of ARM chips in 2012 were Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung
and TI.
ARM doesn't mandate how things must be, they do not manufacture anything,
they just license their architecture, and chip makers go from there.
It therefore must be possible to license "plain vanilla" ARM, without fancy
backdoor anything. The equivalent of the plain "goo" that I mentioned in an
earlier post in this thread.
I wouldn't be surprised if many chip factories had some sort of blanket base
license to produce ARM, perhaps with add on features/costs as extras.
The ARM A20 and A10 SoC chips made by Allwinner are very good, however
support is not. This is why many small board makers jump around with their
sourcing. It's not always features that drive changes. The point is, there is
a real choice of supply with ARM vs x86 which would indicate more freedom in
ARM than in x86 if only because there are more choices of supply and of
design.
Allwinner has been very popular, but I'm not sure they are in the "big" 4 or
"big" whatever of chip makers.
And even if Allwinner has become a "big" chip maker during the past year (I
don't know if that is true or false), and if perhaps they got bossy and
demanding about how "an Allwinner" chip must be; since ARM architecture is
licensable and the chips producable in many independent factories around the
world, it seems it would be easy enough and maybe cheaper to find another
source of supply (a smaller producer perhaps) more willing to manufacture a
free hardware design/chip/board.
Trying to do that with x86 or via an all new chip created from scratch and
produced by one supplier would have to be a lot harder and maybe impossible
due to costs and legal issues.
Seems like there is lots of flexibility with ARM. Obviously I don't know all
the details yet. Just saying things continue to look quite good.
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Not related to the above info, but wanted to get it posted in this thread,
ARM does offer virtualization…but not on all designs.
