P.A. Semi was partially responsible for the A4 and maybe A5? What about A6, A7, A8, A9, A10, A11, A12, A13, A14? You casually state "making it better and better", as if that's a regular occurrence for CPU architects over the past two decades. It's not, unfortunately.

Iterating a uarch is not a given. Ask Intel & AMD.

20% to 40% IPC gain / year is not a given. Ask Intel & AMD.

Iterating 20% to 40% IPC gain / year / nearly identical TDP is absolutely not a given. Ask Intel & AMD.

Likewise, P.A. Semi (in 2008) is a very recent addition in Apple's Arm journey.

// the history //

In the 1980s, Apple's ATG (Advanced Technology Group) pushed to move to on RISC and worked with Acorn in England to co-develop ARM III CPUs for Apple's "next-gen" devices

In 1990, Arm Ltd. is founded with the two largest shareholders as Apple (43%) and Acorn (43%).

Apple was reportedly responsible for Arm's current name: it's "Advanced", not "Acorn", because Apple didn't want to be associated with a former competitor.

Apple mainstreams Arm far earlier than the iPhone: in 2001, the first iPod launched with a 90 MHz ARM-derived CPU.

// P.A. Semi //

People always forget the history of the P.A. Semi acquisition, even as it's linked there.

The short version: Intel was literally gifted a major high-perf Arm uarch and screwed it up; that same CPU architect refuses to join Intel, founds P.A. Semi some years later, and Apple acquires P.A. Semi and that CPU architect joins Apple.

That "lot of low power chipmaking experience" was literally gifted to Intel and they couldn't do jack. Apple needed to acquire it after decades of trying to get Arm to work, far more effort than Intel.

Likewise, in the 2000s, Intel had significantly higher profits than Apple: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/stock-comparison?s=gross-...

In Q4 2005, Intel made $23b in profit. Apple made $4b in profit. Intel was a CPU IP & foundry. How did they miss Arm or other RISC designs? That's the kicker: Intel didn't miss Arm. Intel has repeatedly failed & floundered with "side technologies" that they thought inferior to x86: heterogenous dies, chiplets, Arm, XScale, etc. = Intel explicitly decried and denounced these "cheap" tactics by their competitors.

Intel in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s genuinely exhibited "not made here means it's crap and automatically inferior to anything we can make" philosophy.

1993: Daniel Dobberpuhl develops StrongARM, a high-performance ARM uarch.

1997: Intel is gifted StrongARM through a legal settlement and the "keys to the kingdom". Dobberpuhl doesn't agree to join Intel.

2003: Unrelenting on Arm's future, Dobberpuhl starts P.A. Semi after working at Broadcom.

2007: Intel sells off StrongARM, saying they don't know how to make money with ARM as AMD had applied unprecedented pressure with K8 & Athlon64.

2008: Apple acquires P.A. Semi.

2009: Dobberpuhl retires from Apple.

It's not like AMD, Intel, etc. were ignorant x86 had severe perf/watt limitations. They knew and they know. They tried repeatedly to overcome them and then simply lost interest as they couldn't make money.

Sources (a great read / watch, if you're bored):

https://www.theregister.com/2006/06/28/intel_mobile_failure/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AADZo73yrq4&t=449s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240049543/Intels-Strong...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_W._Dobberpuhl