> I thought designing a CPU core, based on existing ARM technology,
> wasn't that complex.

Titan uses Power ISA, not ARM ISA. As for the scale of costs, I think it depends on whether it's about a new core from scratch or about the enhancement of a pre-existing core. In case of Titan minator says it's a new core from scratch, thus more costly to develop, while in case of the Hummingbird core Intrinsity enhanced the pre-existing ARM Cortex-A8 core with their Fast14 technology, thus less costly to develop.

> Or perhaps it's my misunderstanding, as it's not like ARM gives you some
> schematics, and then you tweak and build around them. Perhaps what ARM
> gives you is the instruction set and nothing else, and that's not at all like having
> the plans for a building.

I already tried to explain the difference between an ISA license (here: Titan according to minator, albeit Power instead of ARM) and a core license (here: Hummingbird) to you, using the example of Marvell (seems I didn't succeed, unfortunately):

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6726&forum=11&post_id=78281#78281

So for developing Titan Intrinsity allegedly had only the Power "instruction set and nothing else", while for Hummingbird they had access to "the plans for a building".

> ARM might ask you for several million already in order to get
> a license for their ISA.

While that might be true (not only regarding ARM Ltd., but IBM as well) it doesn't apply here. Intrinsity developed Titan for Applied Micro, who have already had a Power ISA license (as well as a PPC4xx core license) from IBM, and they developed Hummingbird for Samsung, who have already had a Cortex-A8 core license from ARM Ltd. So no additional 3rd party licensing costs were involved in either case.

> congratulations Andreas: I've never seen a member here with such a
> "Yokemate of Keyboards" award!

Thanks. I think I got it by passing 2000 postings.

> Are you the most posting user here?

Second most actually, with Targhan being first and magnetic being third. But that's really not important to me as I don't post with the intention to raise my posting count. You're #9 btw ;-) You can see current stats there on the left:

https://morph.zone/modules/lastposts/