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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?"
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20011102S0121
Following on from her success with BBC Basic, Sophie Wilson was asked to help with the instruction set, testing it by hand, on paper !
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Being a monopoly isn't illegal
Using your monopoly position in illegal anticompetitive ways however, is.
Sort of quasi-off-topic, but here goes:
In Finland we have a rather interesting and deliberate monopoly situation in regards to gambling. Slot machines, tables and casinos are all controlled by RAY (decided by the state, I believe), but RAY on the other hand is a non-profit organization. RAY actially funds all sorts of cultural and social service activities. The same applies to Veikkaus, which controls the lottery, betting on sports and similar stuff.
The result is that gambling in Finland is indirectly giving money to charity, weird, but nice in it's own way. I guess I'm just trying to say that even a regulated monopoly can be a good thing, sometimes anyhow.
.: Max Romantschuk
ARM shipped 780,000,000 processors last year
indeed, i don't think ARM shipped any processors at all. ARM designs and licenses cores. from low powered arm7's in your run of the mill mp3 player, to a 400+mhz arm9/strongarm/xscale in high end pdas. arm-based chips are produced by dozens of manufacturers in many countries. arm cores run linux (and have a big developer community), wince, and multiple embedded operating systems.
i think the real failing of the linked story, however, is that ARM IS NOT A MONOPOLY. sure, they may ship more chips than anyone else. they make a good product. but in the embedded world, there is choice. mips, 68000, super-h, powerpc, dozens of proprietary architectures, even low end x86. if arm decided to pull some of the stuff that intel and microsoft try, they'd have the bottom pulled out of them as everyone migrates to their favorite arch of the day.
There is so much nonsense in this series I'm not sure what to comment about.
ARM advertises -just not in the magazines you read! Further, ARM isn't a monopolist, they just happen to be the most successful and oldest of the companies that supply this type of item. There is also Tensilica, MIPS, and ARC to name three of their competitors.
They also have done a good job of propagating their technology by giving some of it away! What say you? Yep. They have published the specs for the AMBA bus which has become the defacto standard for connecting things together inside a chip.
Now -they didn't give away their own implementations of this stuff, but the spec is more than sufficient to build the structure in a couple of days.
Perhaps ARMs biggest success has indeed been their market path. They have done deals with every major chip manufacturer so that I can get access to their designs by merely paying royalties. I can go give them 750K up front if I want their IP to use myself, or I can pay maybe 50 cents a chip instead. This gives me a lower entry price with only the foundary guys paying the 750K. In one fashion they get paid twice!
In any case, they aren't the only ones on the market, merely the most successful.
Have you compiled your kernel today??