ARM Holdings PLC, the UK chip designer whose chip designs are used in iPhones and iPads, yesterday announced the opening of an ARM Design Center in Hsinchu in northern Taiwan to support the company’s advanced processors, graphics and intellectual patents.
The Cambridge-based company designs chips and develops intellectual patents that are licensed to other companies to design and manufacture their own chips.
Apple Inc is on a long list of ARM technology licensees. The processors used in iPhones and iPads are based on ARM’s technologies, and are manufactured in Samsung Electronics Co’s factories.
Photo: CNA
ARM yesterday said in a statement the latest move reinforced the importance of Taiwan and the Asia-Pacific region to the UK company.
More than half of the 7 billion ARM-based chips shipped over the past 12 months were made in Taiwan, ARM president Tudor Brown said in a media briefing in Taipei yesterday.
The design center, ARM’s 11th overseas, has an initial operating capital of NT$50 million (US$1.7 million), according to information from the Hsinchu Science Park administration. The Hsinchu design center is the third of its kind for ARM in Asia, after centers in Shanghai and India.
“The goal of this design center, like others ARM does, is to add a catalyst to our partners,” Brown said.
The focus of this design center was on advanced system on chips (SOC) implementations based on ARM’s Physical IP, processors and graphics solutions, he added.
Brown said he expected the first product built with the company’s highest performance Cortex-A15 chips would hit the market by the end of next year and reach high volume in 2013.
Last month, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, announced that it has “taped out” the Cortex-A15 from its factories using new 20--nanometer process technology. “Tape out” refers to the final stage of the chip design cycle before it is sent out for manufacturing.
ARM is planning to recruit six to eight staff members for the design center, with half of them local hires. The company is expected to double that number in next few years, ARM Physical IP Division vice president John Heinlein said, adding that the center would focusing on processors made on advanced 28-nanometer and 20-nanometer process technologies.
United Microelectronics Corp (聯電) is also a local partner of the UK chip desinger.
To keep up with strong demand for its technologies, ARM planned to spend US$200 million on research and development this year, higher than the US$150 million spent last year, Brown said.
Last year, ARM seized 28 percent of 22 billion units of SOCs shipped worldwide. Brown expected the company would outgrow the industry as a whole, which is expected to expand about 55 percent to 34 billion units of SOCs in 2015.
Commenting on the competition with Intel Corp in the ultrabook field, a new notebook category, Brown said he agreed that the ultrabook was what people wanted, but he disagreed that people wanted Intel processors inside them.
"I honestly think that the form factor of ultrabook is ideally suited to ARM technology," Brown said.
Taking netbook computer as an example, Brown said "the trouble was people wanted it [running on Windows]. As we look to the future very soon, we'll see ultrabook form factor with Widnows [and] with ARM technology."
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