ARM has raised the stakes

ARM has raised the stakes

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The risk is real, to be sure. But ARM's technology strategists reckon that it's also an opportunity for the company, pointing to the fact that ARM processor‑based chips for mobile computing are lower cost and lower power than traditional computer "x86‑based" products. And certainly, ARM's licensees have announced chips that are suitable for mobile computers, including tablets, e‑book readers and laptops.

What's more, ARM has raised the stakes, announcing its new "big.LITTLE" micro-architecture in 2011, which combines a higher performance with a long battery like Fujitsu FPCBP91 Battery, Fujitsu LifeBook E8020 Battery, Fujitsu LifeBook C1212 Battery, Fujitsu FPCBP94 Battery, Fujitsu LifeBook N3500 Battery, Fujitsu Esprimo Mobile X9510 Battery, Fujitsu Esprimo Mobile X9525 Battery, Fujitsu LifeBook C1212D Battery, Fujitsu FPCBP107 Battery, Fujitsu FPCBP65 Battery, Fujitsu LifeBook C2220 Battery, Fujitsu FPCBP50 Battery life. Smartphones containing this new technology will reach mainstream consumer markets during 2013, say analysts.

This market is characterised, says ARM, by a large number of proprietary processor architectures being developed by a great many semiconductor companies, who then sell very low cost chips into a highly fragmented end-market. In other words, it's a very different market from ARM's traditional markets. And, as ARM puts it:

It could be difficult for ARM to be successful in the microcontroller market. ARM will need to displace many established in-house processor designs. ARM has invested a lot of effort and cost to achieve modest penetration to date. [What's more] as the microcontroller chips are low-cost, the royalty revenue per device is also lower than in other markets.

That said, ARM believes that it can capture a significant proportion of the microcontroller market. Its Cortex‑M processor family was developed specifically for this market and, by the end of 2011, had been licensed more than 120 times, helping the company to almost double its market share.

The result: more OEMs have chosen ARM processor-based chips for their products, and more semiconductor companies have chosen to sell ARM processor-based chips for the first time. Indeed, says ARM, during 2011 such semiconductor companies as Cypress, Freescale, Fujitsu and Toshiba started shipping ARM microcontrollers for the first time. All of which sounds to me as if the battle is finally going ARM's way.

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