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ARM Announces Major New Licensee, Is it Apple?

Wednesday July 30, 2008 10:52 am PDT by Arnold Kim
9to5mac points to a recent ARM announcement that the company has secured a major architectural licensing deal with an "unnamed OEM" (original equipment manufacturer). This broad architectural license allows the manufacturers to develop their own implementations of the ARM processor and has been issued very few times over the years. The name of the licensee has not been officially announced.

During today's financial results conference, the CEO of ARM explains why a company might want this sort of license:

"Some handset manufacturers want to have more control over the design of their handset, including the components within it, than others. And it's as simple as that. And the ARM business model offers one that level of control, if that's what one wants to do and one has the technical resources available to do it," said East.

EETimes' Peter Clarke believes that Apple is the unnamed licensee. The iPhone reportedly contains as many as five ARM processor cores inside of it from multiple vendors. Apple's recent acquisition of P.A. Semi brought its founder and CEO Dan Dobberpuhl into Apple. Dobberpuhl led the team at Digital Equipment that developed the StrongARM processor using a similar architectural license from ARM. Steve Jobs has also revealed that they had specific plans for P.A. Semi's acquisition to develop system-on-chips for future iPods and iPhones.
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iMacmatician
46 months ago
It'll be interesting to see how this affects future iPods, iPhones, and any other handheld devices.

Apple most likely thinks that Atom is too power consuming at this stage for it to be used in those devices.
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BigD58
46 months ago
Hmm Interesting. I do hope this apple they are talking about. This would mean so many new things for them.:D
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macrockbuddy
46 months ago
I hope Apple doesn't venture too far away from Intel. I like the Intel processors in their mac line up. I think if Apple announced that they were no longer using Intel processors it could hurt sales.
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Chaszmyr
46 months ago

I hope Apple doesn't venture too far away from Intel. I like the Intel processors in their mac line up. I think if Apple announced that they were no longer using Intel processors it could hurt sales.


This has absolutely nothing to do with Apple's relationship with Intel. This is about iPhone chips, and the iPhone doesn't use any Intel technology. Apple putting their own silicon in iPhones is a very far cry from using it to replace Intel processors in computers.
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damnyooneek
46 months ago

I hope Apple doesn't venture too far away from Intel. I like the Intel processors in their mac line up. I think if Apple announced that they were no longer using Intel processors it could hurt sales.


no this move will likely be for their handheld products.
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kornyboy
46 months ago

I hope Apple doesn't venture too far away from Intel. I like the Intel processors in their mac line up. I think if Apple announced that they were no longer using Intel processors it could hurt sales.


I agree, the intel processor has been a great addition to the mac. I guess we will have to wait and see. I do think that the Apple-Intel relationship is strong and I would see no reasons to sever ties with Intel.
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r.j.s
46 months ago

I hope Apple doesn't venture too far away from Intel. I like the Intel processors in their mac line up. I think if Apple announced that they were no longer using Intel processors it could hurt sales.


ARM makes ultramobile processors, not laptop/desktop processors.
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arn
46 months ago
Makes sense this is Apple. By doing this, Apple stands to gain a significant competitive advantage over other companies who can't just throw together an iphone-clone using the same parts available to everyone.

It's a fine line though. you lose some economies of scale etc... Apple needs to be able to actually produce better chips or ones that give them an advantage.

arn
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techage14
46 months ago
Very interesting. I can't wait to see if this is true. It would open many doors as some one else said. I wonder what's going to happen next...
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iMacmatician
46 months ago

This has absolutely nothing to do with Apple's relationship with Intel. This is about iPhone chips, and the iPhone doesn't use any Intel technology. Apple putting their own silicon in iPhones is a very far cry from using it to replace Intel processors in computers.

And Apple already uses ARM chips.

Apple + ARM + PA Semi = custom chips for iPhone, iPod, etc.?

Apple + Intel + PA Semi? = custom chipsets for Macs?
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