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There's a lot of ignorance in some of the threads here, but the reality is proliferation of "custom" (but under license) ARM chips _is the end goal of ARM_. Tha

There's a lot of ignorance in some of the threads here, but the reality is proliferation of "custom" (but under license) ARM chips _is the end goal of ARM_. That's their whole business model. They (Arm, the company) don't manufacture anything. They just design and license their designs. To be clear there is little risk in anyone manufacturing truly proprietary chips. ARM licensing ranges from "you shall produce exactly to spec" for those wishing to vertically integrate commodity parts to "you may freely modify" -- but in either case it's the ARM design being licensed. It does nothing but harm the licensee to build something novel and strange functionality. This system has been working quite well for Arm for decades at this point. If anything, the fact that well-known brands like Apple and Google are spinning ARM chips speaks volumes to Arm's excellent business model. Nothing we've seen from either tech giants is truly revolutionary -- the smaller fabs have been doing the same things for years. Why anyone ever sold Arm, I will never understand.

laurent92 5y ago
This is an excellent example of positive use of IP law, and why removing copyright and patent would harm some legitimate business models.
- creato 5y ago
  Why is this being downvoted? I think it’s a good point. It seems like ARMs success is due in part to minimal fragmentation, which is due in turn to ARM’s licensing strategy.
  - Trex_Egg 5y ago
    how to downvote in Hacker news? There is no down vote button right?
    - lkschubert8 5y ago
      After a certain upvote threshold on your account you get the ability to downvote
      - Trex_Egg 5y ago
        Oh ok thanks for letting me know.
    - devoutsalsa 5y ago
      Get 500 karma. I’m pretty sure that’s the level to unlock downvoting.
  - dnautics 5y ago
    Is it really the case that ARM is less fragmented than x86? Or, even if it is, x86 is wildly successful in the face of a rogue licensor spinning off an unofficial 64-bit extension to it's ISA.
- FpUser 5y ago
  >"This is an excellent example of positive use of IP law, and why removing copyright and patent would harm" And there are countless counter-examples when IP law causes harm to consumers and inventors. >"legitimate business models" And what makes them legitimate? IP law is an artificial construct which currently serves select few. Why should not I be able to "invent" something and sell it without the worries just because somebody else happened to have the same idea? And many of the existing patents, especially ones in a software field can be "invented" by any reasonably intelligent Joe Doe in a few minutes if there is a need.
- salawat 5y ago
  If it relies on Monopoly power, I have trouble regarding it as "legitimate". "It makes me money" is not in and of itself a successful business model.
  - taneq 5y ago
    Is that not the literal definition of a successful business model?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - laurent92 5y ago
    No, not “it makes me money” but “it succeeded to build an entire ecosystem of partners inheriting from a central producer of intelligence work, all of this succeeding to produce better output than the established player, Intel.” This is “good enough” as a measure of success, I don’t care where the money flows as long as an industry is being built. Actually that’s the sole role of money, which could be replaced by anything you like (point system, exchange, central planning). I’m just noting that IP protection enabled this industry, this time, despite me being generally against.
- nine_k 5y ago
  Copyright and patents do serve some good purposes; this is why they were introduced in the first place. It's the endless extension of copyright (hello, Mickey Mouse) and granting excessively wide patent rights (e.g. on whole classes of chemical compounds) that does not serve the initially envisioned good purposes. Overdose is bad, whether you use table salt, a medicine, or a law. ARM in particular is not known for abuse of the system, so indeed they are a positive example.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  I'm not sure why this is an example of positive use of IP law. I maybe agree that it's an example of IP law not being ridiculously abused (however I really don't have enough information). It might be positive to arm shareholders as well, but generally positive to society? You say that removing ip laws would harm legitimate business models, sure but having IP laws also harms legitimate business models, which ones would be more "legitimate" or "positive" is not straight forward to say.
fragmede 5y ago
Theres survivor bias - the success of ARM ignores the relative failure of other alternative instruction sets. SPARC, Itanic, MIPS, the road to today is littered with instruction sets that didn't make it in the same way ARM has. Oracle and Fujitsu will still sell your business SPARC servers, but I don't know that I'd buy that business unit (never mind that I don't have that kind of money). It's easy to buy the lottery ticket after you've got the winning numbers. ARMs successful now but there was a lot of luck and hard work up get there.
- caslon 5y ago
  The comment above is talking about ARM's business model, which Intel on Itanic definitely didn't have, Sun didn't have for SPARC (they later freed it, after it was no longer commercially relevant), and MIPS as a company didn't follow, either.
  - ScalaFan 5y ago
    Anyone remember the Motorola families of chips? 68xxx and 88xxx.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - caslon 5y ago
      Plenty of people do (they're some of the most beloved chips of all time), but their peak was pre-1990, so most people don't bring them up in discussions like this.
      - PaulHoule 5y ago
        They should. The 68K line was the Itanium of it's time. It overpromised and underdelivered and was crushed by the 286 and 386. Many vendors made machines based on it (Atari ST, Amiga, Mac, Sun Microsystems, Sinclair QL, ...) and all of those vendors either went out of business or transitioned to RISC architectures in a hurry. It was one of the many near death experiences the Mac platform had. It was more successful than the beautiful losers such as the TMS9900, iAPX 432, i860, NS32000, but it hit the end of track and left everyone in the lurch.
amelius 5y ago
ARM clearly shows that Apple's aggressive supply chain integration is perhaps not the optimal model from the economy's perspective.
- klelatti 5y ago
  Why? Apple’s use of Arm IP would seem to have a minimal impact on the economy.
  - melony 5y ago
    Apple is one of the founders of ARM with very different licensing pricing and rights. Apple using ARM is very different from Google or Samsung using ARM.
    - minhazm 5y ago
      Apple was involved in the founding of ARM, but their licensing isn't special. Many companies, including Samsung, have ARM architecture licenses which allow them to use the ARM instruction set with whatever custom design they want. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Ltd.#Arm_architectural_licensees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Ltd.#Arm_architectural_lic...
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      I don't think Apple has any ownership stake in ARM anymore, regardless of their initial investment in 1990. (Though I'm not sure how much they still had up through 2016 when SoftBank bought them) Do we know that Apple has a special arrangement not available to other licensees? Near as I can tell, in terms of licensing rights the only major difference is that they purchase an "architecture license" that gives them the right to create more custom designs, but this is a license available to and purchased by other companies like Qualcom, Intel, and others. And if Apple has lower royalty rates, it may simply be a product of their scale rather than special treatment. But I don't know this for sure-- only that a little bit of searching didn't find anything obvious about special arrangements.
justinclift 5y ago
> Why anyone ever sold Arm, I will never understand. To make a quick buck, and who cares about timeframes other than short term? ;) /s
ksec 5y ago
>There's a lot of ignorance in some of the threads here, Not just this thread, but on HN. Hardware and their business model is a thing where signal to noise ratio is extremely low on HN. If it wasn't because of a few working in ASML, ARM, embedded programming adding some immense value of input to balance things out, Hardware on HN is no different to any other forum on the internet.

laurent92 5y ago

This is an excellent example of positive use of IP law, and why removing copyright and patent would harm some legitimate business models.

creato 5y ago
Why is this being downvoted? I think it’s a good point. It seems like ARMs success is due in part to minimal fragmentation, which is due in turn to ARM’s licensing strategy.
- Trex_Egg 5y ago
  how to downvote in Hacker news? There is no down vote button right?
  - lkschubert8 5y ago
    After a certain upvote threshold on your account you get the ability to downvote
    - Trex_Egg 5y ago
      Oh ok thanks for letting me know.
  - devoutsalsa 5y ago
    Get 500 karma. I’m pretty sure that’s the level to unlock downvoting.
- dnautics 5y ago
  Is it really the case that ARM is less fragmented than x86? Or, even if it is, x86 is wildly successful in the face of a rogue licensor spinning off an unofficial 64-bit extension to it's ISA.
FpUser 5y ago
>"This is an excellent example of positive use of IP law, and why removing copyright and patent would harm" And there are countless counter-examples when IP law causes harm to consumers and inventors. >"legitimate business models" And what makes them legitimate? IP law is an artificial construct which currently serves select few. Why should not I be able to "invent" something and sell it without the worries just because somebody else happened to have the same idea? And many of the existing patents, especially ones in a software field can be "invented" by any reasonably intelligent Joe Doe in a few minutes if there is a need.
salawat 5y ago
If it relies on Monopoly power, I have trouble regarding it as "legitimate". "It makes me money" is not in and of itself a successful business model.
- taneq 5y ago
  Is that not the literal definition of a successful business model?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- laurent92 5y ago
  No, not “it makes me money” but “it succeeded to build an entire ecosystem of partners inheriting from a central producer of intelligence work, all of this succeeding to produce better output than the established player, Intel.” This is “good enough” as a measure of success, I don’t care where the money flows as long as an industry is being built. Actually that’s the sole role of money, which could be replaced by anything you like (point system, exchange, central planning). I’m just noting that IP protection enabled this industry, this time, despite me being generally against.
nine_k 5y ago
Copyright and patents do serve some good purposes; this is why they were introduced in the first place. It's the endless extension of copyright (hello, Mickey Mouse) and granting excessively wide patent rights (e.g. on whole classes of chemical compounds) that does not serve the initially envisioned good purposes. Overdose is bad, whether you use table salt, a medicine, or a law. ARM in particular is not known for abuse of the system, so indeed they are a positive example.
cycomanic 5y ago
I'm not sure why this is an example of positive use of IP law. I maybe agree that it's an example of IP law not being ridiculously abused (however I really don't have enough information). It might be positive to arm shareholders as well, but generally positive to society? You say that removing ip laws would harm legitimate business models, sure but having IP laws also harms legitimate business models, which ones would be more "legitimate" or "positive" is not straight forward to say.

fragmede 5y ago

Theres survivor bias - the success of ARM ignores the relative failure of other alternative instruction sets. SPARC, Itanic, MIPS, the road to today is littered with instruction sets that didn't make it in the same way ARM has. Oracle and Fujitsu will still sell your business SPARC servers, but I don't know that I'd buy that business unit (never mind that I don't have that kind of money). It's easy to buy the lottery ticket after you've got the winning numbers. ARMs successful now but there was a lot of luck and hard work up get there.

caslon 5y ago
The comment above is talking about ARM's business model, which Intel on Itanic definitely didn't have, Sun didn't have for SPARC (they later freed it, after it was no longer commercially relevant), and MIPS as a company didn't follow, either.
- ScalaFan 5y ago
  Anyone remember the Motorola families of chips? 68xxx and 88xxx.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - caslon 5y ago
    Plenty of people do (they're some of the most beloved chips of all time), but their peak was pre-1990, so most people don't bring them up in discussions like this.
    - PaulHoule 5y ago
      They should. The 68K line was the Itanium of it's time. It overpromised and underdelivered and was crushed by the 286 and 386. Many vendors made machines based on it (Atari ST, Amiga, Mac, Sun Microsystems, Sinclair QL, ...) and all of those vendors either went out of business or transitioned to RISC architectures in a hurry. It was one of the many near death experiences the Mac platform had. It was more successful than the beautiful losers such as the TMS9900, iAPX 432, i860, NS32000, but it hit the end of track and left everyone in the lurch.

amelius 5y ago

ARM clearly shows that Apple's aggressive supply chain integration is perhaps not the optimal model from the economy's perspective.

klelatti 5y ago
Why? Apple’s use of Arm IP would seem to have a minimal impact on the economy.
- melony 5y ago
  Apple is one of the founders of ARM with very different licensing pricing and rights. Apple using ARM is very different from Google or Samsung using ARM.
  - minhazm 5y ago
    Apple was involved in the founding of ARM, but their licensing isn't special. Many companies, including Samsung, have ARM architecture licenses which allow them to use the ARM instruction set with whatever custom design they want. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Ltd.#Arm_architectural_licensees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Ltd.#Arm_architectural_lic...
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    I don't think Apple has any ownership stake in ARM anymore, regardless of their initial investment in 1990. (Though I'm not sure how much they still had up through 2016 when SoftBank bought them) Do we know that Apple has a special arrangement not available to other licensees? Near as I can tell, in terms of licensing rights the only major difference is that they purchase an "architecture license" that gives them the right to create more custom designs, but this is a license available to and purchased by other companies like Qualcom, Intel, and others. And if Apple has lower royalty rates, it may simply be a product of their scale rather than special treatment. But I don't know this for sure-- only that a little bit of searching didn't find anything obvious about special arrangements.

justinclift 5y ago

> Why anyone ever sold Arm, I will never understand. To make a quick buck, and who cares about timeframes other than short term? ;) /s

ksec 5y ago

>There's a lot of ignorance in some of the threads here, Not just this thread, but on HN. Hardware and their business model is a thing where signal to noise ratio is extremely low on HN. If it wasn't because of a few working in ASML, ARM, embedded programming adding some immense value of input to balance things out, Hardware on HN is no different to any other forum on the internet.