Is Microsoft now designing ARM processors?

<p>Definitely more of a collaboration sort of thing. I'm going to guess that Microsoft went to Qualcomm and said "here are a list of requirements that we want you to implement, that none of your existing chips meet" and then Qualcomm modifies their existing designs to meet their requirements. The resulting chip is thus a custom part, because it's not the same SKU that Qualcomm offers to other customers, but Qualcomm did most of the actual development of the chip.</p><p><br></p><p>Microsoft has some experience in custom chip collaborations (custom AMD parts for Xbox One S/X and the holographic processor in the HoloLens), so here I'm guessing something similar happened: Microsoft's hardware team wanted AI processing acceleration built into the CPU, and then Qualcomm changed their 8cx to add that in.</p>