Based in England and owned by Japan’s SoftBank, Arm is the company that designs the CPU cores found in most smartphones in the world (approximately 95% of them). It also is responsible for the Mali brand of graphics processing units (GPU). According to the Financial Times (via Slashdot), Arm is developing its own chip. But no, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung, and others need not be concerned. The chip is being produced to help the company show off its designs and to attract new customers.”
Those who have been briefed on the move say that this is being done to attract more business and hike revenue and profits before it looks to get listed on the NASDAQ market. You might recall that GPU designer Nvidia offered to buy Arm for $40 billion in September 2020. The deal, which would have merged the world’s largest supplier of GPUs (Nvidia) with the third largest, never was completed as there were too many issues to get the largest semiconductor transaction in history over the finish line.
The largest provider of CPU cores for smartphones, CPU is designing its own prototype chip
Arm is hoping that its new prototype chip will demonstrate how powerful its designs can be. The company has built test chips before in partnerships with both of the world’s most cutting-edge foundries, TSMC and Samsung. But this new chip design is said to be more advanced as is aimed at chip manufacturers. As it turns out, the head of Arm’s engineering team worked at Qualcomm and ran the project that led to the development of the fabless chip designer’s Snapdragon chip.
This news might get some of Arm’s customers like Qualcomm and MediaTek nervous about Arm looking to compete in the chip market. But that would be shooting itself in the foot and Arm says that it has no plans to license or sell the chip and is only having prototype chips made. These prototype chips will be built for mobile devices, laptops, and other electronics.
