ARM's flurry of press releases is an indicator of progess
The new reporter on the Silicon Fen beat can get overwhelmed by the press releases from chip designer ARM Holdings. Just lately there seems to have been a flood of announcements of tie ups with high-profile manufacturers.
In the past week there have been joint releases with Samsung Electronics, Renesas Technology Corp, National Semiconductor Corporation and NEC Electronics about highly technical microprocessors.
It's all symptomatic of the business model adopted by this company, which was founded in 1990 by 12 engineers (pictured) as Advanced RISC Machines as a spin out of Acorn Computers with a charter to create a new microprocessor standard. It now designs microprocessors for a very wide range of digital products.
The serial announcements
Samsung Electronics said it is offering ARM Metro low-power products, part of ARM's Artisan family of physical Intellectual Property (IP), for low-power process that is a part of its Common Platform, a process technology and design enablement that can be leveraged for multi-sourcing flexibility by customers of IBM, Chartered and Samsung.
Renesas Technology, a manufacturer of integrated semiconductors for automotive, mobile and PC/AV markets, said it has licensed the ARM11 MPCore multiprocessor, enabling the company to make Large Scale Integrated (LSI) semiconductor solutions incorporating the ARM processor.
By licensing the ARM processor, Renesas can expand its system-on-chips (SoC) core line-up. As computing moves into an era of ubiquitous networks, better processing power is becoming critical for driving new features in PCs, digital electronics, and mobile phones. But, as improved performance needs greater processing speeds, processors tend to exceed power-consumption tolerances. One solution gaining ground is the multi-core chip architecture, in which multiple CPU cores are mounted on a single chip, a SoC.
National Semiconductor Corporation and ARM announced the availability of the second-generation PowerWise interface (PWI) specification, which provides better power management interconnect capability to feature-rich, multi-domain SoCs in battery-powered, handheld electronic devices. As an extension of PWI 1.0, PWI 2.0 adds multi-domain capability to address emerging needs of highly integrated SoCs.
The two companies, in collaboration with adopters such as Matsushita Electric, Philips Semiconductor, Samsung and ST Microelectronics, developed PWI 2.0 to enable system designers to put in place complex designs while maintaining low pin-count. To extend battery life in handhelds with increased functionality, device makers need advanced power management techniques to dynamically optimize the power consumption of each individual function inside a feature-rich SoC.
Earlier in the week ARM said NEC Electronics was the latest 'ARM Partner' to license its ARM1176JZF-S processor, CoreSight technology and the PrimeCell Level-2 Cache Controller for integration into advanced mobile devices. The licensing agreement enables NEC to strengthen audio security features, as well as deliver a system LSI for high-end mobile phones, such as TV phones, requiring video processing capabilities.
ARM's business model
These 'partnerships' with key industry players is what ARM's business model is all about. The company argues that innovation in high-technology is a high-risk and high-reward proposition. Revolutionary products face steep challenges of mass adoption that only reward solutions that fit with existing infrastructure, volume, and economics. They don't believe they can go it alone.
So the business model is built on advanced R&D investment along with close relationships with partners and customers. The existing investments and infrastructure in place for high-volume applications can be leveraged for emerging applications.
It probably means that one way outsiders can monitor ARM's business progress is to monitor the flow of press releases announcing deals with partners and containing warm words from them like those from Dr. Ben Suh.
The VP of ASIC/Foundry Business Development, System LSI division, Samsung Electronics said: "Through our continued strong relationship with ARM, we can now offer our ASIC and foundry customers a proven low-power IP solution to meet their design requirements."
ARM and Renesas Technology view their partnership as a key, as multicore architectures assume ever-increasing importance. The companies say Renesas Technology's leadership in advanced SoC marketing, development, and mass production is ideal for ARM's advanced CPU core technologies. It forms a "solid basis" for collaboration in the development of pioneering semiconductor products.
