8 ms·
The success of ARM's strategy is based on them being an impartial supplier of designs that facilitate low power consumption and some degree of interoperability
by cstross 11y ago
The success of ARM's strategy is based on them being an impartial supplier of designs that facilitate low power consumption and some degree of interoperability at the assembler level.
If anyone buys it, they kill the goose that lays the golden egg. All those corporations run their own vertically integrated stack to some extent -- if you were Apple, would you be willing to trust an ARM design licensed from MS or Google? (Or Intel, when the whole point of Apple's CPU strategy going back 22-25 years is to be mostly CPU-independent after getting burned twice in a row by MC680x0 and then PowerPC)? If you were Samsung, would you license an ARM design from Apple-owned ARM? And so on.
- zump 11y agoImagination did buy MIPS though.
- zurn 11y agoMIPS was almost dead then though. They weren't bought out because they seemed successful. Possibly a hedging move against ARM's dominance.
- Andaith 11y agoInteresting, I'd assume the opposite. If you're apple, and you're licensing ARM designs, can you risk Google or Microsoft, or Oracle buying ARM? Can you risk them changing the licensing terms, or stop licensing altogether? How come none of them want to be the first to buy, securing their rights to ARM, and instead enjoy the risk of a competitor buying ARM?
- stephencanon 11y agoYou pay lawyers to negotiate contracts carefully to protect against that risk, you don't need to buy the company.