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So when I asked ARM’s Pete Hutton how ARM had increased Q3 royalty revenues by 37% and he replied “because we are moving into new markets and deploying new technology,” I thought it sounded pretty reasonable.
Whereas some companies don’t do diversification – Messrs I***l of Santa Clara are a case in point – ARM has been rather good at it.
Starting from mobile, ARM has permeated into MCUs, servers, basestations, consumer goods, embedded markets and computers.
Now mobile accounts for only 60% of ARM’s unit shipments, 30% of basestations are now on ARM and 64-bit embedded markets are seeing a “rapid” transition from Power PC and MIPS to ARM. The world is dividing between two architectures – x86 and ARM.
64-bit has been a huge success. “250 million v8 cores were shipped in one quarter,” says Hutton, “I think we’re the highest shipping 64-bit on the planet.”
Servers have been a longer haul. “It’s a journey,” says Hutton, “momentum is starting to build. The big enterprise guys have loads of x86 code in there but the Cloud guys and the new players are moving to ARM.”
“It’s picked up in the last three months,” adds Hutton, “when the big enterprise guys see momentum building they will start moving to ARM.” ARM licensee Applied Micro reports big interest from China in ARM-based servers.
In the aspirant IoT arena, ARM is determined to be a player although IoT’s floundering under non-interoperability bedevilled by a bewildering array of standards.
“ARM,” says Hutton, “is supporting all the different standards – we will support any standard people want.”
That’s ARM’s Way – making friends and influencing people.
Absolutely, Timothy, a paternalistic approach to their workers typified the best of the great Victorian businessmen. I think it persists in some companies, but rarely in tech.
I think that should depend on the companies, Timothy, they should offer low-interest or no-interest loans for mortgages. Trouble is house price inflation might make them rich enough to give up work!
I think in the old days, companies like the Lever Brothers who made sunlight soap housed their workers themselves. Obviously there was also Arkwright and the Bourneville factory. Now they new how to look after their workers.
Well Keith, I go over Magdalen Bridge take the next right at Longwall St and follow the road round to Mansfield Coll and the new Law Library and park around there on a meter. The meter stops around 5:30 and doesn’t start again till 8-ish so you can get a night!s parking cheaply.
And a lot more now SEPAM the Scots were daft to throw all that dosh at foreign DRAM companies rather than backing indigenous start-ups
Cambridge felt like a trap for me a lot of the time. I enjoyed my job but just watched aghast as the house prices went up. If we want the country to have a great electronics sector then housing bright engineers in reasonably priced accommodation would give them a hope and make them feel as though somebody out there cared.
Didn’t Silicon Glen have plenty of low cost housing, while it lasted?
I’ve always found reasonably priced metered parking off the South Parks Road behind Wadham and near to Mansfield Colkege, Keith
I usually use the Thornhill Park&Ride if I actually want to into Oxford centre, which I don’t do often, usually travel round the ring road and although its getting beter it is still not good. As for Cambridge, well getting to e.g ARM is no problem because you don’t need to go anywhere near the centre – there is a very convenient backroad off the A11 via Babraham Road that will take you there, no traffic problems at all.
Well Yes indeed Timothy, Oxford seems to have sorted its traffic so why not Cambridge?
David, I can tell you that Oxford is even worse than Cambridge as far as traffic is concerned. You can’t park in the city itself without paying a small fortune in one of the few car parks, and the ring road seems to be subject to contant roadworks. It’s a nightmare.
Sounds like Silicon Valley, Timothy.
I’ve always maintained that Cambridge is a victim of it’s own success. A bit of planning decades ago might of helped but hindsight is a wonderful thing, as they say.
That’s great for Arm. However there are two sides to every story. Try being a young engineer in Cambridge with average house prices well over £300K. Or just drive around like I did last weekend and get stuck in the interminable traffic.