ARM faces automotive shut out from Freescale, ST

Peter Clarke, EE Times
(02/07/2006 10:41 AM EST)

LONDON — The prospects for processor technology licensor ARM Holdings plc in the automotive seem to have dimmed with the news that Freescale Semiconductor Inc. and STMicroelectronics NV have formed a design alliance for automotive that is based on the PowerPC processor architecture.

Freescale and ST claimed they are top two suppliers of ICs to the automotive sector and their alliance, including a joint design center based in Munich, Germany, involves a cross licensing of PowerPC and power and IGBT technologies. The two companies appear to have decided that PowerPC is going to be an automotive industry standard in much in the same way that ARM became the dominant processor architecture in mobile phones in the 1990s.

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