ARM CEO Warren East on IoT, Nokia, platforms, Europe's future

Peter Clarke, Brian Fuller
EETimes (11/21/2012 2:54 PM EST)

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – ARM CEO Warren East said Internet of Things applications could double the company's market size, he wouldn't "bet against" Nokia and his company is envisioning future technology evolution by building internal platforms.

In a wide-ranging interview at ARM TechCon, EE Times asked East about how the company is adapting to better serve its increasing domain breadth that now ranges from servers, through mobile clients and down to the Internet of Things (IoT).

"The Internet of Things for us is about the sale of microcontrollers. We think it is likely to follow a similar path to mobile phones."

East explained that the first microprocessors in cell phones were 32-bit devices that were required to spend most their time running the cellular communications protocol. The processor clock cycles that became available when the phone was not being used for a call were put to uses running early games on tiny displays. Now we are used to multiple processor cores on an SOC, and multiple processor chips in a mobile phone; a modem chip, an application processor, a connectivity chip.

So East expects a move to multiple cores in MCUs. "That alone would double the market size for ARM," he said.

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