Fireside chat with ARM CEO Warren East and Wall Street Journal's deputy bureau chief, Don Clark
Could Apple have possibly co-founded ARM?
Well, in all practicality, yes i.e. according to CEO Warren East in a conversation with Wall Street Journal “Chip” Czar and friend Don Clark at a “fireside chat” during ARM’s developers’ conference.
“ARM was founded as essentially a design house for Apple and Acorn to design microprocessors for both to use. Apple eventually used the ARM chip in its Newton PDA”.
The ARM chief then explained that with a dozen designers and no sales team, the tiny British company had no other choice but to license its design, charging an upfront license-fee and then receive additional royalties on a per unit basis.
With an inherent low power design that “creeps” in everything the company does (chips, software…), ARM targeted high-volume portable applications like PDAs, cell phones, etc. The very first handset recalled East was a German company Hagenuk, after 3 years. ARM also targeted the manufacturers of the Apple Newton.
“As a small start-up, we were ready to develop cores for anything really to survive… But in 1994-95, with 100 people in the company, this was not going to work so we had to concentrate and that was the mobile space”, added East.
The current economic turbulence is a bit of a concern for ARM as it takes about 4 years from the time they license a core to a silicon provider to the time the products ship in volume, representing a noticeable revenue stream.
“Therefore, you have to think through economic cycles. One of the things to do is carry on investing and developing new products so when the economic cycles turn, you’re right there and ahead of your competitors”.
TechPulse 360
Mark Boslet