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SoftBank arguably ruined them, they went from an operating margin of around 50% when they were public to 10% under SoftBank. Considering where ARM designs and

SoftBank arguably ruined them, they went from an operating margin of around 50% when they were public to 10% under SoftBank. Considering where ARM designs and architecture are today their revenue and profits are pitiful and it does hold them back considerably. ARM justifiably so should’ve been one of the largest companies in the world by now.

czzr 5y ago
No, it shouldn’t. ARM is ARM precisely because it doesn’t charge a huge amount - if it did, it would not be as widely used.
- dogma1138 5y ago
  There are many ways to have better operating margins and higher revenue conversion than just charging more.
- foobiekr 5y ago
  Correct. Arm was much more expensive for a time which is what kept Tensiluca and MIPS going.
syshum 5y ago
I think you have an oversized understanding of what ARM does, and what value it brings to companies using an ARM chip It is not intel, it is making the chip or even really designing the chip, though they do have reference designs... ARM is ARM exactly because companies can take the instruction set and design their own chips around it for their own needs, they are not holding out for the next AMD or intel design.. That however means the individual companies take on more of the design costs, and risk if the design is a failure. No Arm should not be one of the largest companies in the world right now, not even close.
- dogma1138 5y ago
  The vast majority of ARM users do not design their own chips anymore, even Qualcomm has abandoned that. 99% of all ARM based chips use reference ARM designs.
  - syshum 5y ago
    You would need to provide a source for both those claims First off, Qualcomm just spent 1.4 Billion on a design firm, for the purposes to bolstering the internal design team [1] Then there is a 99% claim, is that by sales, volume, etc? Has I know many companies that design their own ARM processor that make up more than 1% of the market, Apple, and Samsung alone would refute that statement [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/qualcomm-closes-nuvia-deal-promises-in-house-laptop-cpus-by-2h-2022/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/qualcomm-closes-nuvi...
    - dogma1138 5y ago
      Qualcomm is using reference ARM cores these days so does Amazon in Graviton and Samsung in Exynos for example their latest and greatest SoC uses Cortex-X2, Cortex-A710 and Cortex-A510 cores with an AMD GPU, Apple is probably the only big player today with custom cores. The small players also all tend to use Cortex cores. You still need a design team to integrate ARM IP blocks with your own IP or within the constraints of a given manufacturing process but almost no one is making their own cores. Qualcomm used to have custom core, and maybe they bought Nuvia for that after seeing that the X2 cores from ARM won’t be enough to compete with Apple. My own personal bet is that they’ll attempt to dabble with custom again and will eventually give up as it’s too expensive. Apple managed to make it work because they are designing cores for their own use and they essentially poached an entire development team from Intel.
      - uxp100 5y ago
        > You still need a design team to integrate ARM IP blocks with your own IP or within the constraints of a given manufacturing process but almost no one is making their own cores. To emphasize this a little, I think the headcount needed for the this is quite a bit larger than the additional headcount need for making your own core. There is a lot of working in making a high performance SoC using Cortex cores, and a lot of work in making a custom core, but I think some commenters here think that so many more custom cores are being made than in reality because they think that the rest is the easy part and the hard part is all cpu design, so if these fabless semiconductor companies are spending (overlapping) years per chip with thousands of employees it must be because everything is custom (regardless of what you can learn just looking up SoCs on wikipedia)

czzr 5y ago

No, it shouldn’t. ARM is ARM precisely because it doesn’t charge a huge amount - if it did, it would not be as widely used.

dogma1138 5y ago
There are many ways to have better operating margins and higher revenue conversion than just charging more.
foobiekr 5y ago
Correct. Arm was much more expensive for a time which is what kept Tensiluca and MIPS going.

syshum 5y ago

I think you have an oversized understanding of what ARM does, and what value it brings to companies using an ARM chip It is not intel, it is making the chip or even really designing the chip, though they do have reference designs... ARM is ARM exactly because companies can take the instruction set and design their own chips around it for their own needs, they are not holding out for the next AMD or intel design.. That however means the individual companies take on more of the design costs, and risk if the design is a failure. No Arm should not be one of the largest companies in the world right now, not even close.

dogma1138 5y ago
The vast majority of ARM users do not design their own chips anymore, even Qualcomm has abandoned that. 99% of all ARM based chips use reference ARM designs.
- syshum 5y ago
  You would need to provide a source for both those claims First off, Qualcomm just spent 1.4 Billion on a design firm, for the purposes to bolstering the internal design team [1] Then there is a 99% claim, is that by sales, volume, etc? Has I know many companies that design their own ARM processor that make up more than 1% of the market, Apple, and Samsung alone would refute that statement [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/qualcomm-closes-nuvia-deal-promises-in-house-laptop-cpus-by-2h-2022/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/qualcomm-closes-nuvi...
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    Qualcomm is using reference ARM cores these days so does Amazon in Graviton and Samsung in Exynos for example their latest and greatest SoC uses Cortex-X2, Cortex-A710 and Cortex-A510 cores with an AMD GPU, Apple is probably the only big player today with custom cores. The small players also all tend to use Cortex cores. You still need a design team to integrate ARM IP blocks with your own IP or within the constraints of a given manufacturing process but almost no one is making their own cores. Qualcomm used to have custom core, and maybe they bought Nuvia for that after seeing that the X2 cores from ARM won’t be enough to compete with Apple. My own personal bet is that they’ll attempt to dabble with custom again and will eventually give up as it’s too expensive. Apple managed to make it work because they are designing cores for their own use and they essentially poached an entire development team from Intel.
    - uxp100 5y ago
      > You still need a design team to integrate ARM IP blocks with your own IP or within the constraints of a given manufacturing process but almost no one is making their own cores. To emphasize this a little, I think the headcount needed for the this is quite a bit larger than the additional headcount need for making your own core. There is a lot of working in making a high performance SoC using Cortex cores, and a lot of work in making a custom core, but I think some commenters here think that so many more custom cores are being made than in reality because they think that the rest is the easy part and the hard part is all cpu design, so if these fabless semiconductor companies are spending (overlapping) years per chip with thousands of employees it must be because everything is custom (regardless of what you can learn just looking up SoCs on wikipedia)