ARM Proliferation Propels Achronix Into Mobile IP.

By 2016, one ARM core will be being shipped for every human being on the planet, says John Lofton Holt, CEO of FPGA vendor Achronix and a foundry customer of Intel.

The proliferation of ARM-based SOCs is what has propelled Achronix to modify its business model by offering to license its IP.

So Achronix, the high-performance FPGA vendor which is a foundry customer of Intel, is now offering to licence its technology to SOC manufacturers as a way to get into high volume markets.

The company will continue to sell discrete FPGAs manufactured on Intel’s 22nm finfet process which, said Holt, delivers either 50% lower power or 37% better performance than the 32nm planar bulk CMOS process.

Achronix’s move to try and address larger markets may be driven by the perception that, though Achronix’s FPGAs are high performance, their power requirements place them outside the mainstream of the FPGA business.

Hence the move to licensing its technology which, reckons Achronix, will get its technology into mobile and consumer markets.

Having FPGA on an SOC allows for the incorporation of changing standards after the chip has been made, said Holt, and may avoid the need for a re-spin.