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ARM has not sold a single chip in 2015 but 200+ partner companies that integrate ARM into theirs SoC together with quite sophisticated tech like modems, GPU's,
by duhast 10y ago
ARM has not sold a single chip in 2015 but 200+ partner companies that integrate ARM into theirs SoC together with quite sophisticated tech like modems, GPU's, accelerators of any kind etc. In many cases real estate taken by ARM is below 1/4 of total die area.
- amelius 10y ago> real estate taken by ARM is below 1/4 of total die area Yes, but perhaps it is the most valuable area of the die? The rest may be, for instance, taken by highly repetitive memory cells?
- barkingcat 10y agowithout those memory cells the arm chip is useless. Try using a cell phone with 1kb memory. These days things are so integrated that there's no "most valuable", except perhaps power gating / power control parts of the circuitry.
- jl6 10y agoValue is determined by supply and demand, not function.
- zxcdw 10y agoI don't understand what you mean in this context. Elaborate please?
- icebraining 10y agoJust because memory is indispensable, doesn't mean its more valuable for its designer/manufacturer, since competition may force them to accept a much lower margin. There are multiple companies designing memory chips, but only one can license ARM chips.
- blastrat 10y agothank you! this discussion also helped me realize the importance of both memory--in which to store broad knowledge and associations--AND raw horsepower in the CPU.
- chongli 10y agoMost valuable? I doubt it. Each of these partners shipping major chip volumes have likely ran a cost/benefit analysis of an in-house CPU vs paying the licensing fee. Here's a more sobering set of numbers to compare ARM and Intel on: Intel Corporation net income (2015): $11.4 billion [1] ARM Holdings plc 2015 total assets (2016): $3.21 billion [2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Holdings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Holdings
- lostlogin 10y agoIntel is in a problematic situation though and is laying off 12,000 staff st the moment. I don't think the dollars tell the full story.
- abainbridge 10y agoNot in many cases. Things like Bluetooth and WiFi chips have a simple CPU and then lot of custom digital logical and fancy RF components on the die. The CPU is only a small part of the design, both physically in the amount of area it takes up and also of the amount of engineering effort that goes into it. Correspondingly, it represents a small part of the value to the customer. Obviously the customer wanted a good CPU, but there are lots of relatively cheap ways to obtain a good enough small CPU. When I worked at Cambridge Silicon Radio, we'd license in various bits of IP like the USB. We might pay more for that than a small ARM core would cost.