ARM: The Non-Evil Monopolist

yootje writes "ZDNet is running an article about ARM, a chip-maker who controls more than 80% of the cell phone market and 40% of the digital camera market. ARM shipped 780,000,000 processors last year. ZDNet finds it strange that no one seems to have anything against this company. And maybe it is strange: according to the article many would say ARM is a monopolist, but you never hear anyone say 'ARM sucks!'. But then again, why would they?"

Comments

Shipped?

[mst76]

I didn't know ARM "shipped" any processors at all.

Re:Shipped?

[TonyJohn]

Incorrect. ARM licences its instruction set architecture (ISA) as well as its own implementations of that ISA. Intel (and DEC before them) do pay a license fee and royalties for the StrongARM and all the XScales. Have a look at the ARM Milestones. 2001, Intel and TI license the ARM architecture.

Not just a monopoly.

[rebeka thomas]

Being a monopoly isn't illegal

Using your monopoly position in illegal anticompetitive ways however, is.

I thought ARM

[mocm]

only designs CPUs. Do they really manufacturethem?
The article only talks about CPUs shipped, but not that ARM ships them.
AFAIK ARM cores are use by many chipmaker from Intel to TI, but arm don't sell CPUs.

Re:I thought ARM

[tsho]

You're right.

It's well known that ARM is a Connected Community is a global network of companies aligned to provide a complete solution, from design to manufacture, for products based on the ARM architecture.

Look here: http://www.arm.com/community/

Yes, but

[Raul654]

The government also have to show harm to the consumer (at least in the US you do - I don't think they have to in Europe). This is always the hardest part.

Re:Yes, but

[CAIMLAS]

I think that, in this scenario, there really hasnt been any harm to the consumer.

ARM has produced solid products for years and years. They're widely accepted in the "industry" as powerful processors for application-specific tasks that consume low amounts of power, on a relatively small budget.

What's more, they're a kind of standard. If you're hiring a microcontroller programmer, or an embedded programmer, I'd say there's a pretty good chance that they at least have some exposure to working with ARM hardware, as opposed to something more obscure.

All this combined decreases the cost of development for the companies, and results in more products coming to market.

Becuase they are unkown, mostly.

[Sycraft-fu]

There are plenty of other monopolies or near monopolies out there. Go read up on Sysco if you want one (they control basically all grain silos in the US). The ones people care about are the one that get press time. The ones that stay low on the radar, almost nobody cares about. Most people don't actually do a lot of general research, they just get in to whatever is news. You have to do a bit of digging to come upon lesser known monopolies.

Customer is always right

[Fizzl]

ARM does good business. They support they cutomers. they make good products. That's all. I don't care if they are a monopoly as long as they continue to be the benevolent dictator.

They ship exactly what the customer wants. In cell-phone markets it's common to "roll your own" processor. You basically order the ARM core and then tell them exactly what instructions you want to be in the chip. They will deliver that.

Re:Why nobody complains

[h0tblack]

Arm have a very interesting history. They were originally setup by Acorn back in the early/mid eighties to produce a CPU for the future lines of desktop machines Acorn were producing (A3000, RiscPC's etc). This enabled Acorn to be the first with RISC-on-the-Desktop machines a long time before Apple came along with their claim to this title with their PPC based desktop machines about ten years later.
ARM were floated off as a seperate entity by Acorn (a very wise move which enabled ARM to grow where Acorn failed) with investment by Acorn, VLSI and Apple (they used the ARM in their Newton). Being a member of Acorn's enthusiast group I was offered dirt cheap shares and only wish I'd had the money to buy some as they rapidly increased in value. Part of this increase came about as ARM partnered with Digital to work on the StrongARM, before becoming rather closer to Digital, and then in turn Intel (as part of some agreement following the two large companies throwing law-suits at each other over unrealted matters). Intel's involvment with ARM enabled them to produce the XScale and no-doubt helped increase penetration in the wider mobile market.
It's amazing to see a company that I knew from a young age grow into such a pervasive entity. I still have a couple of old Acorn machines, the most powerful of which has one of the first StrongARM chips availible in it, it wasn't until a decade later that I got my next StrongARM, in the form of a much smaller Zaurus. There's also ARM's lurking in games-consoles (GBA, Dreamcast), routers, PDA's, portable music players, mobile phones, infact just about every type of small device. A Lot of people use products with ARM tech in them without even realising it.

Re:Because it was part invented by a lady

[Nighttime]

Actually, Sophie Wilson is a transsexual.

And before I get modded a troll for this, it's a well-known fact in the Acorn community. Acorn being the company that helped start ARM and produced a range of desktop machines using said chips. He/she also was involved with the design of the BBC microcomputer.

Bit if background

[aitsu]

I used to use an ARM computer when home computing was taking off in the UK. They weren't ARM then, they were called Acorn, building oddball "home" computers like the Acorn Atom. In the 1980s Acorn fought off rival bids from the likes of Sinclair to land a deal with the Department of Education and the BBC to develop the BBC Microcomputer and later the Acorn Electron. Its version of BASIC - BBC BASIC - became the programming language standard taught in all schools in the UK for a whole generation. In fact you could stick me infront of a Beeb now and I could probably knock off a simple text adventure without even thinking. ARM, incidentally, used to stand for Acorn RISC Machines. (Later, the 'A' came to stand for 'Advanced'.) Yes, they were in fact one of the earier companies to commercialise RISC computing with their R-series designs, which were also supplied to UK schools in the form of the Acorn Archimedes computer. The Archimedes was one awesome machine.

This is all from memory, however. Here's a more accurate history.

Re:because...

[mikrorechner]

Intel is Arm's strongest compeditor in low-power embedded chips with its Xscale chips.

Sorry, but that's BS.

As you can see here and here, Xscale is based on ARM designs, thus making Intel an ARM customer, not a competitor.

Re:Their Customers

[Guy Harris]

does anybody know the names of ARM's competitors?

MIPS, for one, although their list of products using MIPS-architecture processors doesn't say anything about mobile phones other than a satellite phone.

Not a monopoly

[haxor.dk]

ARM may have a dominant position, but they do not have a monopoly.

Economically, ARM is engaged what is called "monopolistic competition". They have a product which is interchangeable with that of competitiors, but is differentiated from the alternative offerings. Same as Nike shoes, BMW cars, Apple computers.

Re:sometimes, monopolies are good

[AvantLegion]

but if you look at the debacle of california and their power problems when electricity was deregulated there,

Except applying the word to "deregulation" to CA's power is about as incorrect of a use of a word as is humanly possible.

Only in California does "deregulation" mean "forced sell-offs, forced price setting, prohibition of long-term supplier contracts, and more external price controls". Only in California can you "deregulate" something and actually come out the other end with more regulation.

Never, ever should the word "deregulation" be used to refer to what happened in California. There are precious few more gross misuses of a term than that.

These people may have something against ARM

[sjmurdoch]

In 2001 a student produced an open source microprocessor implementing a cut down version of the ARM instruction set, However not long after, ARM pressured OpenCores to remove the it from their website, and nnARM disappeared.

Maybe the reason people like ARM is that at the moment, most of their competition is from big companies and not open source. If projects like OpenCores catch on and FPGAs become cheaper then maybe open source can perform as well in that region as it does in software. Then I think people would not be happy with ARM taking down compatible products, just as people would not be happy if Microsoft went after WINE.

Re:Because it was part invented by a lady

[seanvaandering]

Actually, Sophie Wilson is a transsexual.

Sophie Wilson, formerly Roger Wilson, is a British computer scientist. In 1978 she designed the Acorn Microcomputer, which was the first of a long line of computers sold by Acorn, Ltd. In 1981 she developed BBC BASIC for the BBC Microcomputer, a microcomputer that enabled Acorn to win a contract with the British Broadcasting Corporation. In 1983 she developed one of the first RISC processors, the Acorn RISC Machine (ARM).

More on Sophie at her homepage