Arm Ltd Making Chips Now

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Up to now, Arm (the company) has never made chips, only chip designs
(and designs for chip components) that it has licensed to other
companies. This model has been spectacularly successful, making ARM
(the architecture) the most successful computer architecture ever,
shipping more chips per year than the entire population of the Earth.

Now they want to move away from that model, and start making chips
themselves. In effect, they are now competing with some of their own
customers. Will this, and other slightly worrying moves from the
company, make some licensees think twice about being so committed to
ARM, and start looking to other more freely-licensed alternatives,
like RISC-V? Will this, if not kill the goose that laid the golden
egg, at least severely clip its wings?

<https://www.computerworld.com/article/3825123/arm-secures-meta-as-first-customer-in-chip-push-challenging-industry-giants.html>

[Retrograde]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Up to now, Arm (the company) has never made chips, only chip designs
(and designs for chip components) that it has licensed to other
companies. This model has been spectacularly successful, making ARM
(the architecture) the most successful computer architecture ever,
shipping more chips per year than the entire population of the Earth.
Now they want to move away from that model, and start making chips
themselves. In effect, they are now competing with some of their own
customers. Will this, and other slightly worrying moves from the
company, make some licensees think twice about being so committed to
ARM, and start looking to other more freely-licensed alternatives,
like RISC-V? Will this, if not kill the goose that laid the golden
egg, at least severely clip its wings?

I don't know if this is a good idea or a bad one, but was just thinking
it's like Intel went full-speed down a very long, dead end street and
are now in serious jeopardy. ARM in the server room is a big deal.

At work I'm conscious that 90% of what I do can be done on a low-powered
Android tablet requiring an occasional charge, but perfectly usable on a
plane, or with a battery pack etc. But that one stupid Windows app
requires I lug around a heavy laptop/charger, and run a Win10/Intel
machine that lasts <3 hours on a charge while running hot.

Ask me which one I'd rather travel with. Go ARM, go!

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Now they want to move away from that model, and start making chips
themselves. In effect, they are now competing with some of their own
customers.

Something else that seems calculated to get up the noses of their
customers is they are poaching staff from some of those very
customers, to work on these in-house chips.

<https://www.computerworld.com/article/3825123/arm-secures-meta-as-first-customer-in-chip-push-challenging-industry-giants.html>

[Scott Dorsey]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
Now they want to move away from that model, and start making chips
themselves. In effect, they are now competing with some of their own
customers.

Something else that seems calculated to get up the noses of their
customers is they are poaching staff from some of those very
customers, to work on these in-house chips.
<https://www.computerworld.com/article/3825123/arm-secures-meta-as-first-customer-in-chip-push-challenging-industry-giants.html>

So... they are moving from only licensing the architecture to becoming a
fabless chip house using that architecture? Or are they actually
setting up a chip fab?
--scott