{"id":488789,"date":"2023-04-24T11:50:27","date_gmt":"2023-04-24T09:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=488789"},"modified":"2023-04-24T11:53:40","modified_gmt":"2023-04-24T09:53:40","slug":"arm-making-its-own-advanced-chip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/488789-arm-making-its-own-advanced-chip.html","title":{"rendered":"Arm making its own advanced chip"},"content":{"rendered":"

UK semiconductor and software design company Arm is developing its own advanced chip to showcase the potential of its products, Financial Times reports<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The project is being spearheaded by former Snapdragon designer and Qualcomm executive Kevork Kechichian.<\/p>\n

Kechichian’s recently-formed solutions engineering team started working on a chip prototype around six months ago.<\/p>\n

Several industry executives told Financial Times that the chip’s design was “more advanced” than any previous semiconductors produced in the past.<\/p>\n

The goal of the chip will reportedly be to draw new customers as the company prepares for its initial public offering later in 2023.<\/p>\n

Arm licences its Reduced Instruction Set Computer architecture and processor designs to numerous companies that make powerful compact chips for mobile devices.<\/p>\n

It boasts several advantages over Intel’s x86 architecture, the dominant architecture on computers, including reduced cooling requirements and longer battery life.<\/p>\n

The technology is particularly popular with smartphone manufacturers \u2014 including Apple, MediaTek, Samsung, and Qualcomm.<\/p>\n

Arm estimates that about 95% of premium smartphones<\/strong><\/a> boast chips with its designs.<\/p>\n

In recent years, Arm-based chips have also increasingly been used on PCs, the most noteworthy and widespread being Apple’s M-series.<\/p>\n

These replaced the Intel x86-based processors Apple had used for over a decade. The switch brought substantial performance, heat management, and efficiency benefits.<\/p>\n

Windows Arm adoption struggles<\/h2>\n

However, Arm-based designs for Windows systems have not been as successful, with tech reviewers being highly critical of their poor performance and limited software support.<\/p>\n

Some have blamed the lack of Arm processors for Windows systems on an exclusivity agreement between Qualcomm and Microsoft, meaning the only Arm-based Windows chips have been Snapdragon models.<\/p>\n

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon has promised that Arm-based processors will become common in Windows PCs by 2024, with the company planning Snapdragon chips to rival Apple’s M-series.<\/p>\n

However, a legal battle between Arm and Qualcomm threatens those plans.<\/p>\n

Arm is attempting to stop Qualcomm from developing custom Arm chips that use CPU core designs owned by Nuvia, which Qualcomm acquired in 2021.<\/p>\n

Nuvia’s designs were based on Arm-licenced IP, paid for at high royalty rates, while Qualcomm wants to pay for them at its own lower rate with Arm.<\/p>\n

Nuvia’s technologies are believed to be critical in developing high-performing Snapdragon chips for Windows.<\/p>\n

\n

Now read: Seagate slapped with R5.4 billion fine for selling hard drives to Huawei<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The project is being spearheaded by former Snapdragon designer and Qualcomm executive Kevork Kechichian, who is leading a newly-formed “solutions engineering” team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341042,"featured_media":488807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2752,73014,131,66376,3524,42376,43040],"class_list":["post-488789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-arm","tag-chip-manufacturers","tag-intel","tag-mobile-chips","tag-qualcomm","tag-semiconductors","tag-snapdragon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488789"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341042"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488789"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":488849,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488789\/revisions\/488849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}