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Softbank buys mobile chip designer ARM for $32 billion
Japan's Softbank, which owns US carrier Sprint and many other firms, is set to buy mobile chip company ARM in a blockbuster £24.3 billion ($32 billion) deal. The UK company designs the processors used in virtually every mobile device, including most models from Apple, Samsung and HTC. While it doesn't build them itself, it licenses the tech to Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung and others. If the deal goes through, it would be one of the largest acquisitions of a European tech firm ever, and a vote of confidence by Softbank in ARM's business in post-Brexit UK.
ARM sees 44 percent profit increase in Q1 2013, ships 2.6 billion ARM-based chips
ARM has had a great quarter -- again. This time it's seen pre-tax profits soar 44 percent, while revenues are up 26 percent (to $209.4 million) since the same period last year. The company's thanking the continued adoption of its low-power chip designs, encompassing smartphones, mobile computing and even digital TVs and wearable tech. The advanced tech within its ARMv8, Mali and big.LITTLE ranges has meant the company can command higher royalties per chip. In total, 2.6 billion ARM-based chips have made their way into the gadgets this quarter, an increase of 35 percent year-on-year, with embedded hardware up a hefty 50 percent since Q1 2012. It's seen even better performance from its Mali graphics processor shipments, which are up five times since the same period last year. As outgoing CEO Warren East notes: "Even low cost smart devices can contain multiple ARM-based chips and be based on ARM's advanced Cortex-A series technology and Mali graphics processors." With new friends on board for the near-future, the good times are likely to continue.
ARM and Globalfoundries hammer out deal to promote 20nm mobile chips
Sure it's British, but ARM's mobile empire is being built through careful alliances rather than conquest. The chip designer's latest deal with Globalfoundries, which mirrors a very similar agreement signed with rival foundry TSMC last month, is a case in point. It's designed to promote the adoption of fast, energy-efficient 20nm processors by making it easy for chip makers (like Samsung, perhaps) to knock on Globalfoundries' door for the grunt work of actually fabricating the silicon -- since the foundry will now be prepped to produce precisely that type of chip. As far as the regular gadget buyer is concerned, all this politicking amounts to one thing: further reassurance that mobile processor shrinkage isn't going to peter out after the new 32nm Exynos chips or the 28nm Snapdragon S4 -- it's going to push on past the 22nm benchmark that Ivy Bridge already established in the desktop sphere and hopefully deliver phones and tablets that do more with less juice.
ARM's eight-core Mali GPUs promise 'dramatic' boost to mobile graphics
The current flagship for ARM's mobile graphics technology is undoubtedly the Galaxy S III, which contains a quad-core Mali 400 GPU and delivers some wild benchmark scores. By the end of this year though, we should see a whole new generation of Malis -- not just a Mali 450 for mid-range handsets, but also the quad-core T604 and the eight-core T658, which are based on ARM's Midgard architecture and are taking forever to come to market. Now, to whet our appetites even further, ARM has just added three more variants of the chip to its roster, which can almost be considered the next-next-generation: the quad-core T624, and the T628 and T678, which are both scalable up to eight cores. The trio's headline feature is that they promise to deliver at least 50 percent more performance with the same silicon area and power draw, with the explicit aim of delivering "console-class gaming," 4K and even 8K video workloads, as well as buttery 60fps user interfaces in phones, tablets and smart TVs. The premium T678 is aimed at tablets specifically, and in addition to allowing up to eight cores also doubles the number of math-crunching ALUs per core, which means that its compute performance (measured in gigaflops) is actually quadrupled compared to the T624. However, there's one other, subtler change which could turn out to be equally important -- read on for more.
ARM and TSMC team up on 64-bit chips and FinFET transistors
ARM and TSMC are renewing their vows and plan to continue collaborating well into the future, as they work to optimize the 64-bit v8 architecture for the Taiwanese company's FinFET transistor tech. The two will push next-gen ARM chips to 20nm and beyond, and hopefully shorten the time to market for new designs. The FinFET process should also help boost frequencies, while keeping power consumption low -- a key to the continued success of the RISC architecture. The FinFET architecture is similar to Intel's own tri-gate transistor technology that was instrumental to nudging the Core architecture forward with Ivy Bridge. After those 64-bit ARM chips are up and running at 20nm and powering your next-gen smartphone, TSMC will begin to look at even smaller processes, with an eye on 15nm next. You'll find the entire joint profession of their love for one another after the break.
Series revisits ARM's humble beginnings, BBC Micro and all
If you read our interview with ARM co-founder John Biggs, you know the company behind the processor in most smartphones had quite modest beginnings, what with an office in a barn and all. But Biggs is only part of the story, and Reghardware fleshes the rest out with a two-part series on the "unsung heroes of tech": Sophie Wilson, Steve Furber and Herman Hauser, the team behind Acorn Computers, the British PC company that spawned ARM in the mid-80s. We'll let you click through to the source links to take the journey yourself, but here are a few highlights: earning a computer contract with the BBC, happening upon ARM chips' low power consumption by accident and striking gold thanks to a partnership with Apple.
ARM reports revenues up 13 percent, bicep-curling profits up 22 percent
UK-based chip designer ARM just announced another booming quarter, with revenue up by 13 percent to $209.4 million. Pre-tax profits were even stronger, growing 22 percent year-over-year to $100 million. Not a bad profit margin by anyone's standards, and due to entirely to the Cambridge outfit's business model, which has seen 22 new processor licenses signed this quarter. That includes everything from the smallest Cortex-M class chips for use in the "Internet of Things" right through to the mini-monster Cortex-A15. There were also two new signings for the Mali graphics core, which is still proving its worth in some of the latest Samsung Galaxy devices. Overall, the number of chips that went into mobile phones and mobile computers remained steady, but the shipment of chips for other types of consumer and embedded devices grew by 15 percent year-on-year, proving that ARM not only has muscle, but also fingers in pies.
ARM announces new quad-core Cortex-A15 Hard Macro variant
It's pretty much a year to the day that we reported the possibility of a quad-core Cortex-A15 from ARM, and look what just came across the wire! It's the Cortex-A15 Hard Macro -- the first design from ARM we're aware of that packs four A15 cores. The Hard Macro edition is of particular interest as it aims to help manufacturers bring products to market more quickly and at a lower cost. The chip variant runs at 2GHz, with performance of over 20,000 DMIPS if you were wondering. Notably, it operates with the same power usage of the A9 hard macro, which should mean it's got good efficiency credentials, and it's the first in the family to be based on 28nm process. There's no indication where we might see this turning up, but with the firm spilling the full details at the IEEE Symposium later this week, we're sure we'll find out soon enough.
ARM seeks better security for connected devices, teams up with Gemalto and Giesecke & Devrient
ARM is famous for its low-power chip designs, Gemalto is known for its NFC security features, and Giesecke & Devrient brings some nice nano-SIM notoriety to the table. As a trio, these companies want to push forward a security standard that could be readily used in a wide range of web-connected devices, including tablets, smart TVs, game consoles and smartphones. The standard itself is built on ARM's TrustZone hardware-based security, which has been around for a while and is built into every ARM Cortex-A series processor, but which still isn't as widely used as it could be. By founding an off-shoot company with its partners, ARM hopes to nudge the things along faster and turn TrustZone into the "Blu-ray" of mobile security standards.
ARM boosts profits by 45 percent, strengthens grip on the universe
The British chip designer continued last year's growth streak with a 45 percent surge in quarterly normalized pre-tax profits compared to Q4 2010. Revenues also rose by 21 percent to £137.8 million ($217 million) -- not bad for a company that started out with twelve engineers in a barn. There's nothing complicated about CEO Warren East's explanation of the results -- he simply says that his company sold more designs to "more new customers" and also raked in more royalties from existing deals. Unless the global economies suffers badly in 2012, ARM says it expects to meet market expectations, targeting an annual profit of $860 million this year.
The Engadget Interview: ARM co-founder John Biggs
You've heard of ARM, right? The little chip design company that started out as twelve engineers in a barn in Cambridge, UK, but is now responsible for 25 billion of the microprocessors on this planet? Good, so now you need to meet John Biggs, who's been there since the very beginning -- since before the barn, in fact, when ARM was just a pesky little project within Acorn Computers. Read on for John's straight-up perspective on the company's frangible beginnings, its deep rivalry with Intel, and what those three letters actually stand for.
ARM's Mali-T658 GPU aims to beat the world in 2013; president Tudor Brown steps down
Here's an ARM duo to digest this fine morning -- ARM's president (and co-founder) Tudor Brown has announced that he'll be retiring in May after serving a bit over a score with the company. His final day will be May 3rd of next year, with Chairman Doug Dunn confessing that Brown had played "an important role in the creation and successful development of ARM over the past 21 years and has made an immense contribution in a wide range of positions." Oddly enough, a company spokesperson has stated that ARM has "no plans at this stage to replace Mr. Brown," though we suspect that could change as the date draws closer. In more product-related news, the company's forthcoming (and by "forthcoming," we mean "perhaps by the end of 2013") Mali-T658 GPU should provide a 10x improvement in performance over the existing Mali-400. According to a slide hosted up over at AnandTech, it'll offer double the shader cores per GPU, twice the arithmetic pipes per shader core and "extensive" API support. For those unaware, the Mali-400 MP4 is a real barnburner for the Android platform, and given that the T658 can scale to eight cores, we're guessing you may have just made your mind up about timing on your next smartphone purchase. Hit the links below to dig in deeper, but remember -- 2013 is about an eternity from now. Depressing, we know.
HP and Calxeda's Moonshot ARM servers will bring all the boys to the yard (video)
HP and Calxeda's indiscreet partnership has been revealed to the world: Project Moonshot is a new server based around a brand new ARM-based EnergyCore system-on-chip. These new units are so efficient that a four core version, packing 4GB DRAM, consumes just five watts at full pelt -- for perspective, that's less than your average tablet. The other funky innovation is that all the server nodes now share a single power, cooling, management and storage system rather than carrying it themselves. In terms of space saving, the Redstone four unit chassis you can see in the image above can hold 288 of the little blighters. If you set your alarm clock early to learn more about efficient server architecture, head on past the break for two videos, including a tour of HP's server labs and some press release goodness.
ARM doubles Q3 profit, sees surge in revenue, is understandably pleased
The news just keeps getting better and better for ARM Holdings. Today, the chip designer reported third quarter net profits of £31.5 million ($50.4 million), more than double the £14.8 million it reported during Q3 2010. Revenue, meanwhile, rose to $192.3 million -- a 22 percent increase over the previous year, and a slightly higher figure than previously expected. In a statement, chief executive Warren East attributed these results to a "continued high level of design activity, with many new customers licensing ARM technology for the first time, driven by end-market requirements for smarter, low-power chips." Indeed, a total of one billion ARM mobile chips were shipped this quarter (up ten percent from last year), and the company expects to rake in about $763 million in total revenue, by the end of 2011. Find figures and facts galore, at the source link below.
ARM hopes to strengthen grip on mobile PCs, take 50 percent of the market by 2015
We've already heard rumors that chip designer ARM has been trying to get its wares into the Macbook Air. While we can't add anything to that particular story, we do have further evidence that ARM is going beyond smartphones and tablets in order to target bigger form factors. The company's president, Tudor Brown, has just appeared at Computex to declare that ARM wants to conquer the "mobile PC market", where the company currently only has a 10 percent share. He's aiming for 15 percent by the end of this year, and an Intel-provoking 50 percent by 2015. "Mobile PC" is a pretty ambiguous category, but we think it's safe to assume the focus is on low- and mid-power netbooks and ultraportables. Such devices could potentially run off ARM's forthcoming multi-core chips -- like perhaps the quad-core beast inside NVIDIA's mind-blowing Kal-El processor, or the more distant Cortex-A15. It's hard to imagine these tablet-centric chips ever competing with Intel's top performers, but four years is a mighty long time in this business.
ARM predicts dual-core Cortex-A15 devices in late 2012, quad-core variants 'later on'
Smartphones and tablets, the two hottest categories of consumer devices right now, are dominated by ARM processor designs, so when the company speaks up about its product roadmap, we're inclined to listen in close. The next generation of ARM system-on-chip has been dubbed Cortex-A15 and was expected to ship in 2013, but that's now been accelerated slightly to late 2012, which is when we're told to expect actual devices on sale with A15 silicon on board. Single- and dual-core variants will get us started, before quad-core options start filtering through in 2013. ARM promises a stunning fivefold improvement in performance over current Cortex-A9 SOCs and already has NVIDIA, Samsung, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments signed up as licensees for that new hotness. So now even Samsung's "desktop-class" 2GHz dual-core chip that's slated for 2012 has a reason to look over its shoulder. Happy times!
ARM beats revenue forecasts, swims in piles of gold coins
Mobile chip wunder-company and recent Microsoft BFF ARM Holdings has released its financial results for the second quarter, and the news is good. Real good. Revenues are up about 50 percent compared to the same period a year before and profits jumped a whopping 167 percent. ARM indicates its strong presence in the mobile market is the primary reason for this growth, citing an average of 2.6 ARM-based chips in every cellphone. New licensing deals, like the one with Microsoft, also buoyed that result. What's next for the company? 2.6 ARM-based chips in every baby, puppy, and kitty.
ARM CEO dampens talk of Apple acquisition, says 'nobody has to buy the company'
Apple buying ARM may not seem like the likeliest of rumors, but talk of an acquisition has been enough to send ARM shares to their highest point since 2002, which has now prompted ARM CEO Warren East to comment on the matter. While he's obviously pleased to see his company's stock doing so well, East says that "common sense tells us that our standard business model is an excellent way for technology companies to gain access to our technology," adding that, "nobody has to buy the company." Of course, saying that nobody has to buy the company doesn't exactly rule out the possibility of an acquisition -- Apple or otherwise -- and, last we checked, ARM's stock was still edging up higher into positive territory, so dampening talk doesn't seem to be dampening investors' interest just yet.
Apple rumor roundup: Intrinsity behind the A4, ARM being eyed
Mama always said that downpours followed Spring showers, and sure enough, the Apple news has been flowing hot and heavy overnight. For starters, an IEEE Spectrum report has people talking once more about Intrinsity; if you'll recall, rumors flared up earlier in the month about Apple nabbing said company, similar to the way it acquired P.A. Semi way back in the naughties. Now, it seems that round two of those whispers are gaining steam, with some analysts suggesting that without Intrinsity's expertise, there was simply no way the silicon within the iPad could've been pushed to 1GHz in time for launch. In related news, we're also hearing that Cupertino is interested in acquiring ARM Holdings, and considering just how much business Apple pushes ARM's way, it's not illogical to imagine Apple wanting to just bring ARM in-house. If the deal went down, Apple would obviously hold a huge amount of control over whether or not ARM chips ended up in rival products, and if it yanked those Cortex slabs out from the market place, you can bet there would be a mad scramble to create a competitive portfolio to serve those suddenly chip-less product makers. Finally, a new iPhone OS 4 (beta 2) video has surfaced, giving the world a solid look at a new circular side-swapped animation that occurs when switching apps -- head on past the break to check it out, and give those links below a visit for more of that succulent nitty-gritty.
