What you need to know
- Arm is working on its own chip, according to a report by the Financial Times.
- This is the most advanced effort Arm has taken to produce its own chip, according to the report.
- The aim of the chip is to showcase what Arm designs can do, not compete with chip makers such as Qualcomm and Apple.
Arm is going to make its own chip in what reports have referred to as the company’s most advanced chipmaking effort to date. The chip designer will reportedly work with manufacturing partners to create the chip. While Arm’s efforts differ from what they’ve done in the past, the resulting chip will only be a prototype to showcase the potential of Arm designs.
A report by The Financial Times details Arms ongoing effort to make its own chips. Generally, Arm focuses on licensing its designs to other companies and does not produce semiconductors. Instead, Qualcomm, Apple, and other chip makers use Arm’s designs to produce chips.
That’s not the case, however, with Arm’s reported plans. A newly formed “solutions engineering” team, which is led by Kevork Kechichian, will head the creation of the prototype chips in question. Kechichian previously worked at NXP Semiconductors and Qualcomm.
The word “prototype” is the operative word here. While these efforts are more extensive than what Arm has done in the past when it comes to making its own chip, the company is not set to compete with the likes of Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Apple. The Financial Times reported that those close to Arm insist the chip designer has no plans to sell or license the chip that it’s working on.
That stance is consistent with Arm’s strategy up to this point. Designs from Arm are used by several large players in the chip industry, including Qualcomm and Apple. Arm acts as essentially a neutral party that licenses designs to chip makers, including companies that compete with each other. It would be a radical shift in strategy for Arm to directly compete with its clients.
