08 November 2011
ARM extends its architecture to embrace 64bit processing
There is no denying ARM's success over the years; from its legendary early days in a converted turkey shed to today, where its IP is found in billions of devices. And yet questions are being asked, if only quietly, about where the company goes from here.
In essence, the ARM business model of developing IP, rather than hardware, makes sense. But as ARM freely admits, its IP holds 95% of some available markets. To produce the growth which investors want to see means new markets need to be targeted. If you take a look at ARM's latest annual report, it gives some hints about which markets those might be. Digital tvs is one, where it claims a 35% share; microcontrollers is another, with ARM saying its cores appear in only 10% of devices shipped.
It's not just about shipping more cores, however. The company also needs to develop different kinds of IP so it can supply more of the elements that comprise an SoC. It's making moves here, with the development of media processors.
There is one area to which the ARM architecture is eminently suited: servers. The ARM architecture has three basic planks – processor performance, power consumption and silicon area. Data centres need all of these attributes yet, until the end of October, the company didn't really have an offering. The reason? Data centre applications are almost entirely 64bit; the ARM architecture was 32bit. But version 8 of the ARM architecture addresses that.
Data centre servers are powered almost entirely by Intel processors. If ARM's licensees can produce chips which offer significant power and performance benefits – not to mention price – the doors will open on a new market.
But servers alone won't bring the growth which ARM desires; for this, it must still rely on its licensees developing devices which meet their customers' needs.
Author
Graham Pitcher
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