Chineese firms proved how strong they can be in conception (hisilicon designs among the best socs in the market, servers included)
There is also unisoc (forme xiaomi speadtrum) and of course phytium

A question we don't have the answer to
What is the power and the right China has on ARM IP (arm china) ?  They still design and believe in ARM.
They own imagination IP, they own MIPS and they design x86 zhaoxin, not to forget custom designs for supercomputers (sunway architecture)

The big issue seems to be chip foundries. If china can master 14nm nodes at high rates, it's already a victory for them

Could not be a more derivative name. Phytium is so extremely Chinese. Pentium in mandarin translates by phonetics into "running". Phytium is "flying". So the company must be high.

Except Apple is designing their own cores (and I believe so is Phytium). And they have been planning on using them in laptops and desktops for years. Perhaps even right from the first generation. That surely influenced their design choices. They're not using "off-the-shelf" ARM cores. They certainly do quite a few things differently than anyone else. Competing with Intel is really not as simple as buying a license. Look at the rest. Even Samsung has given up on designing competitive custom cores. I would be more willing to bet on companies like Google or Amazon than on outfits like this one. And even that is a stretch (for non-server use). Qualcomm is probably the closest to becoming another contender. Especially if Microsoft is going to continue in their cooperation and push for ARM.

Of course, you don't necessarily need x86 level of single core performance in the server world. Efficiency can be more important. Still, nobody has succeeded yet. And again, this is something where Google or Amazon stand a much better chance. Since they have a use for it and can guarantee a market for their product. Like Apple. Life is much easier when you have guaranteed demand.

I disagree, I think Apple is the first company to customize a ARM chip to actually compete and surpass Intel or AMD mobile chips. Even Qualcomm and Samsung have yet to prove they have a ARM chip that comes close to Apple silicon. Some of this falls on the poor OS support from Windows 10. Even Linux isn't great with ARM support. Apple's advantage is total control where that has not happened yet with Windows OS or anything else. If Microsoft can marry its own ARM chip to its Surface line, they might have something.