This post concludes the “ARM Basics” tour on how the ARM business model works and why it has been so sucessful. You will need to read the prior ARM basics posts for this to make complete sense. The series of posts start with ARM basics 1.
You will have likely noticed the consistent theme around delivering more functionality to the end-user, sooner, and cheaper. It is what the market demands and what we truly do deliver. To summarize just a few points:
- Integration of discrete processors onto system-on-chip lowers cost and increases performance. The latter allows for the delivery of more functionality to the end-user.
- Integration opens up our opportunity for processor IP. Processor and ecosystem development are incredibly expensive but can now be amortized against massive volume (read: 14 billion units to date), thereby lowering costs.
- Processor IP allows silicon vendors to avoid time+money+resource wastage on reinventing the wheel (read: processor) and instead focus on their core-competencies adding differentiating value to the end-user cheaper and sooner.
- A single architecture target allows an ecosystem to grow and prosper – again, folks can focus on core-competencies rather than messy logistics, and can amortized their efforts against huge TAM.
- OEMs see massive choice, re-use of investments, broad ecosystem, a robust future roadmap, and an IP partner focused on delivering value to them.
- The ultimate culmination of all this is the delivery of more functionality, sooner, and cheaper to the end user.
The end-user scores win #4.
The OEM scores win #3.
The ecosystem scores win #2.
The silicon partner scores win #1.
When everyone is sucessful, it comes back to ARM as win #5 and we reinvest.
Thanks for reading – comments welcome and appreciated.
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By: ARM basics 4 « Eric Schorn’s Processors for People Blog on September 8, 2009
at 4:55 AM
I am a Post Graduate,(MCA), But now i got intreast to learn about arm. So i need clear idea, history, basic block structure, some explanations about that board. Please i need that, could u provide me?
By: Thiyaneswaran on October 23, 2009
at 7:52 AM
Hi Thiyaneswaran,
I suggest you head over to http://forums.arm.com/ and poke around a bit. There may not be everything you need in one place, but there is a good chance you can be pointed in the right direction.
I understand there are Google groups and other news forums as well, but I don’t have the links handy. (I am just off a long-haul flight)
Regards, Eric.
By: eschorn on October 23, 2009
at 4:52 PM
Hi Eric,
You mention that creating the ecosystem is expensive, but that ARM’s advantage has been that it can amortize this expense over 14 billion units. Was this true when ARM first started in the 1990s? If not, what else about ARM IP in the 1990s enable it to become a successful CPU IP?
When you mentioned that a key to ARM’s success is that it is “delivering more functionality to the end-user, sooner, and cheaper.” How does quality factor into this equation? Is it a big part? How tolerant are your silicon partners or do they help out with quality? How readily is ARM willing to unilaterally invest in quality improvement? Was it as quality focused when it first started in the 1990s? If not, what was its focus?
By: Michael on April 14, 2010
at 5:12 AM
Hi Michael,
Excellent questions.
The volume has ramped somewhat exponentially, so the ecosystem and ability to amortize so broadly certainly wasn’t in place early on. However, the focus on ecosystem was very strong from the very beginning so the mentality was there. Having a SW toolchain to support the HW was very important too.
Given the costs and cost structures of silicon, quality is huge, period. I envision today’s environment as the cumulative summation of everything that has gone before, and new things/angles/approaches must always be added. Nobody likes bugs but the IP complexity is rapidly increasing, so partnership comes back into play.
Regards, Eric.
By: eschorn on April 14, 2010
at 6:51 AM