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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?"
Why should I have anything against the company that makes the processor in my GBA? :D
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Maybe their lack of problems comes from the fact that they don't employ sumbarine patents, price fixing, coercion or collusion to keep their position in the market.
They just make a product that's good for its intended purpose and let the marketplace decide.
If only more companies would follow that lead, this would be a better world.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I didn't know ARM "shipped" any processors at all.
Being a monopoly isn't illegal
Using your monopoly position in illegal anticompetitive ways however, is.
RST
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.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
Maybe it is cause ARM does not really shove itself down people's throats. Their business practices help set them apart. In addition, they embrace open source/standards and it's ideals. An example: ...the OpenMAX(TM) working group to define a royalty-free, cross-platform API (application programming interface) that standardizes access to multimedia processing primitives used extensively in video codecs such as MPEG-4, audio and image codecs, and 2D and 3D graphics. The OpenMAX API will enable library and codec implementers to rapidly and effectively make use of the full potential of new silicon - regardless of the underlying hardware architecture.
Lets see free, cross platform, standardized and hardware independent. That meets all my requirements of a good idea(tm). Also their support for embedded Linux probably does not hurt them either.
Push harder towards Open Media/Content
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.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
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.
With that amount shipping a year... I really should get around to fiddling with ARM assembly more. Not a bad way to land a job, I bet.
I propose a simpler explanation: obscurity. The fact that ARM has a large market share doesn't automatically mean that everyone knows about it -- in fact, how many /.ers can honestly say that we know a lot about ARM?
/. are really good at complaining about Microsoft, Intel, AMD, SCO, and just about any company whose name is mentioned. But because ARM keeps a pretty low profile, it avoids the hatred that will inevitably be directed toward it now that its on slashdot.
In short, we at
``We bitch when they don't work.''
Which is far too often, actually. However, I am led to think that this is always (barring physical damage) a software problem. Some might even add: a problem with Microsoft software. I don't know anybody who has a phone with Microsoft software, but the software on Nokia phones does crash, silently fail (e.g. phone not receiving calls while indicating everything is fine), and have strange limitations (no more messages can be stored, even though a few hundred KB of memory available).
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
i'm not saying this, that, or the other thing about arm, but if you look at the debacle of california and their power problems when electricity was deregulated there, then it is clear that for some matters, a monopoly is actually a good thing
it's simplistic to think monopoly=bad automatically
but it's also bad to not recognize where monopolies are a necessary evil due to the high cost and other barriers to competition (do you really want to wire all of california a number of times redundantly for electricity?)
where you recognize a monopoly as inescapable, you must regulate them, bind them with legislation, and watch them like a hawk... and then they are "good"
btw, here's another monopoly that just made the news, and no, they are neither good nor necessary:
us govt and de beers in an agreement to allow them to reenter the us market after a 50 year hiatus for monopolistic practices
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I see this kind of ting far too often on slashdot, a post about some great achievement followed by a snarky comment from an editor about its inefficiency or some other nit, to be followed up by hundreds of posts proclaiming how they would have done it better. I say applaud those innovating and succeeding, don't discourage them.
PS, I have 8 gmail invites to give away (I can't get rid of them fast enough lol), so if you want one please post your obfuscated email addresses below (logged in members only, preference given to subscribers).
Making the moon less necessary since 1998.
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20011102S0121
What ZDNet is implying is this: "People don't like Microsoft because it's a monopoly. But they don't dislike ARM, which is also a monopoly. That's inconsistent and illogical."
Firstly, it's highly questionable whether ARM can be called a monopoly in the sense that MSFT is, because ARM has only about 80% of its market, vs over 90% in the case of MSFT. ARM's competitors have more than twice as much market share as MSFT's competitors.
But, much more to the point, ARM has not engaged in illegal practices to bankrupt its competitors. Remember, for example, Microsoft's piracy of Stacker's technology. Remember how they broke Netscape, by reducing the price of their own browser to zero by cross-subsidizing its development. Today, MSFT is trying to strangle Linux by concluding agreements with PC vendors which prohibit sales of dual-boot systems. These agreements, forced on PC vendors by MSFT's enormous market power, are almost certainly illegal, but taking MSFT to court would cost many millions of dollars and the case would last for years. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg.
MSFT's attitude is, it's OK to break the law if you can get away with it or if the benefit exceeds the costs. That's why Microsoft is widely (and correctly) perceived as evil, not because it has a large market share.
... for such market dominance. And Motorola, Samsung, Sony and everyone else too. I've vaguely known about ARM for a long time and associated them with RISC chips and some PDAs but didn't know they have gotten so big. This is really big, isn't it? Biggest chip supplier to the hottest and still growing appliance market. The Brits have lost it in many areas where they used to do well but this is pleasant surprise. Congrats to the Brits for a job well done.
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
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
``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?"``
It's not strange at all: consumers and end users know little nor care little about the embedded processor, and frankly, the choice of embedded processor has little if any impact on the end user.
There are many other monopolies in various parts of society that people don't get worked up about.
I don't think people dislike monopolies. They dislike what monopolies have come to represent, and what they can lead to. I don't hate the idea of a monopoly. Do you? I just don't like the apparent and usually inevitable consequences.
Monopolies aren't inherently evil, just like dictators. It's just that in almost every example of their existence, they have shown to be detrimental to individuals, businesses, or society as a whole. A "benevolent", utilitarian dictator with the intent to make life better for his/her people could be beneficial to society. He/she would not be limited by legislation, and could focus on working towards a better future without worrying about bureaucracy or red tape. History demonstrates that any good utilitarian tries to amass as much wealth and influence as possible in order to serve these exact purposes. The more power they have, the better job they can do to serve the people. Humans would do much better with a benevolent dictator that they could ever come close to with any semblance of democracy.
Of course, history also demonstrates that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The day the "benevolent" dictator decides that they've done enough for society and that it's time to serve themselves is the day that everything goes downhill. The unfortunate fact is that those who would make good dictators would never be ruthless enough to attain such power. If they were, they probably wouldn't be in the best interest of the public good.
A monopoly is not bad in theory. If a company or organization had a monopoly on... say, microchips, they could drive the technology much faster and better, because they would control every aspect of it. They wouldn't have to worry so much about their software being compatible with their hardware, because they always know exactly what processor is being used. They wouldn't have to fight with competitors over standards, and could add as much functionality as they wanted, setting their own standards.
Unfortunately, theory is not the real world. In practice, monopolies don't do things because they're in the best interest of the public. They do them because they're in the best interest of the company. (Or at least, the company's officers.) This leads to higher profits (theoretically), but lower customer satisfaction. Some side-effects include buggy software, products that fail or break sooner than they should, etc. Because of this, the getting-screwed-public gets fed up and starts hollering. Thus, everyone hates monopolies. But what if the products and services of a monopoly just worked? I'll bet John Q. Public wouldn't care one way or the other at that point.
The average person doesn't care if something goes well. They become livid when there's a problem. A customer won't usually do very much if a company does their job exceedingly well. They will usually boycott the company and stage a rally if the company does poorly. I took an entrepreneurship class in 1992, and learned that the average person would tell 3 people when they were pleased with a product or service, but 11 when they were displeased. Since the internet became the next big thing (around 1994-1995) those numbers have probably skyrocketed. Humans are a loud, complaining bunch.
So is a monopoly bad? Not inherently, but they usually end up that way. I'd say that no one is going after ARM because their products just work and don't seem to cause problems. Their monopoly has not intentionally shut down any competition, or blatantly violated anti-trust laws. Until they screw us, I say more power to 'em.
I think people don't say 'ARM sucks' because you can't really customize your cell phone/pda with this or that cpu, how much ram/hdd you want or what gfx card you want.
If you could actually build a DIY phone as most builds their computer THEN we probably would complain about the monopoly.
--- No, english is not my mother tongue.
Unless I am very much mistaken the XScale is based on the ARM instruction set.
So Intel isn't competing against ARM with the XScale as they pay ARM to use the design.
Rather than making it suck, Intel have produced a higher clock rate version of the architecture for use in applications that need more oomph.
See: Intel PXA255 Processor with Intel XScale Technology
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.
Bot Assisted Blogging
ARM does not sell to the consumer. They sell to other companies who have a professional purchase department. And if ARM tries to pull the same stunts as MS does, they will see a decline in sales, like, DAMN fast....
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
> but does anybody know the names of ARM's competitors?
Nowadays mostly Hitachi, and in elder days, MIPS.
Theres some overlap to Transmeta also in the market for handheld devices if I go by Transmeta's story, but I never encountered them as such in the marketplace.
This is all from memory, however. Here's a more accurate history.
If Sysco destoryed all their grain storage and stocks? This would be their right, as they own it. Do you think that would have no impact on the world? Do not think it would have more impact than software bugs?
Sysco is just the chosen example, there are plenty of others. How about General Electric? They aren't the singular monopoly you are used to, but rather the verticle type, controlling a whole line of products. The make your light bulbs, your appliances, they sell you your insurance, make your medical equipment, your jet engines, you weapon systems, etc. They are a larger company than even Microsoft, the largest in the world last I checked.
Thing is, you really do care about what you hear about. Now if you have a special intrest in something that most peopel don't and thus hear about something that affects it, maybe you care about something most people don't but really, you limit your scope of care to that which you hear about and matters to you.
Don't pretend like there aren't other monopolies out there, and that they can't do things to fuck people over. If you haven't researched it and/or don't care, that's fine, but that doesn't change the reality of the situation.
Also notice I never mentioned Microsoft. I am simply pointing out a general trend. I like using the Sysco example because most people haven't heard of them, and because most people dismiss them with a wave as you do. They never consider what a widespread interruption to the food supply would mean.
My real point is that companies can be monopolies, so long as they stay off the public radar. My dad works for one such company, but no one knows they are a monopoly so no one cares.
It's only a monopoly because of the excellent value of their product, the ARM design. If they wouldn't provide good value, you could be sure that big chip manufacturers like Intel, Motorolla or TI would invest more R&D money in designing their own competing products rather than licensing the ARM design.
So that fact the most potential competitors license the ARM design rather than try to compete shows the quality of ARM. This is not a market like the PC market where Intel compatibility is a requirement. Most people that use embedded ARM processors don't care about code compatibilty. They only thing they want is a controller that does its job.
Marcel
As you can see here and here, Xscale is based on ARM designs, thus making Intel an ARM customer, not a competitor.
"Oh, a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-my-own-Grandpa." - Dr Hubert Farnsworth
MIPS, for one, although their list of products using MIPS-architecture processors doesn't say anything about mobile phones other than a satellite phone.
Arm designs chips and then lets other license them and make them. So intel and the others in the list got a simple choice. Do their own work or pay ARM for their work.
So plenty of competition and hardly small ones. It just seems that some of the big boys prefer think giving ARM money makes a better deal for them. After all it is not like IBM or Intel can't design their own chips.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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.
Core?
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.
Steven Murdoch.
web: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/
To me, ARM instruction set looks simple and elegant and completely in the spirit of John von Neumann's original idea how an universal computing device should be designed.
Comparing to it, x86 architecture evolves for 30 years like a deseased mutant infected with cancer. Backward compatibility on instruction set is a total nonsense from engineering point of you. You do not feed hay or put a saddle on your today's car either.
There you are, staring at me again.
If you've ever had to program one in assembly, you'll know what I mean. The carry flag is inverted! Seriously, what kind of idiot would design such an architecture?
I can't afford a non ARM cell phone, you insensitive clod.
Me neither. They cost an ARM and a leg.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Somewhere around 90% of MS's operating system sales are to other companies, called OEMs, or Original Equipment Manufacturers. Companies like HP and IBM and Dell and Gateway and a horde of smaller vendors. It's MS's actual customers, the OEMs, who were complaining about their strong-arm tactics and abusive pricing schemes and whatnot. (Although many of the OEMs complained quietly, for fear of offending the great and mighty MS who could crush them like a bug and triple the overall costs of their systems on a whim.) The whole reason the USDOJ got involved with the question of browsers is that OEMs wanted to offer their customers a choice between Netscape and IE (this was, if you'll recall, back when Netscape dominated the market), and MS said, "try it and we'll remove your generative organs with a rusty spoon."
Anyway, the real point is not that MS has a "more real" monopoly or something. The big issue is that MS abuses their monopoly. Gratuitously and incessantly. When you have a monopoly, free market rules no longer apply (by definition), so the market has to trust in your good behavior. Which is why abuse of monopoly is called "anti-trust".
Firstly, they operate in a market where their customers could easily up and move to one of their competitors. Their bus architecture is standardised, so all it would take would be to floorplan a new CPU and port their software to the new platform. The embedded market does not have the tremendous momentum that the PC-compatible industry has.
Secondly, they are based in a country (the UK/EU) that actually UPHOLD it's competition laws; and thus they couldn't get away with what Micrsoft has in the US.
One possible reason may be because ARM is actually a recent entity to marketshare.
If you remember ARM got its start by producing a mobile chip that was similar to the PowerPC and fast enough for Apple's Newton line.
It was very ironic that Palm decided to use Apple's desktop chip (the 68030) - which devloped into the Dragonball processor. And to me, this is one reason that only recent Palm offerings even come close to the Newton.
ARM holdings MAY not have been in any hot seat because of Apple.
While I don't think Apple owns any more shares in the company, at one point, they owned a majority stake. Sales of ARM stock ended up being a saviour to Apple's bottom line. This is one of the MAIN reasons Apple discontinued the Newton (or Jobs chose to axe the Newton) Myths place it on revenge against Sculley and on product consolidation. When, in fact, Jobs saw it as opportunity to fudge a bottom line and to gain research and development dollar for the iMac line.
THIS - is one reason I think ARM isn't considered a monpolist - after all - Apple owns 100% of the Apple market and they aren't considered a monoplist - ARM is still benefiting from this relationship.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I'm currently studying for a masters degree in Electronics and Software Engineering, this course is sponsored by ARM. I have been to the ARM main office and they are a very cool company and they treat their employees very well.
.
... oh, forget it.
Your head a splode
Not to be crass, but ARM is like the plantation masters who were kind to "their negros". Just wait till a slave tries to escape and you'll see just how nice they really are.
Sure, ARM is easier going than alot of other outfits, and we don't notice them as much because they deal mostly with companies instead of individuals so their effects on peoples liberty aren't directly noticed as much. But's lets make no mistake about it, there is no nice way to enforce patents any more than there is a nice way to rape people, sooner or later something is going to half to give.
Further down thread you will find complaints about how ARM shut down an open source core project at www.opencores.com. As this kind of movement gets more and more popular - don't be supprised when their nasty side starts to reveal itself.
Look around you; are the most deserving people people always the ones getting promoted?
Think about the IT industry. Are the best products the ones that usually win?
We want to believe that merit is rewarded; and to some degree it is. But the only way we can believe this absolutely is either to close our eyes or to buy into a tautological definition of merit: merit is that that succeeds. There's no particular mystery as to why ARM is not resented: it is dominant and it has technically superior products. It confirms our cherished belief that if you build a technically superior product, you will win (ignoring the history of desktop ARM of course), and so we feel well disposed towards them. What really motivates contempt among the technologically sophisticate is not success, or copyrights, or patents, but when mediocrity wins and undermines our belief in the fairness of "the system".
A note about the tautological definition of merit. I was an MIS director in the late 80s early 90s. At the time we were on an exponential growth curve for personal computer adoption in business. Apple had a product that was superior to DOS (and later Windows) in so many ways it was laughable to compare the two. However, it cost more than twice as much to equip people with a Mac as with a PeeCee; in an era when a typical computer order was by the truckload, this was huge. The rest, as they say, is history.
Now, was Microsoft more meritorious than Apple? Well from the point of view of their shareholders there is no question this is true. The situation from their customers' standpoint is murkier.
Yes, the availability of a cheaper, lower cost personal computer probably sped the adoption of computers. We probably reached the 90% point of equipping office workers a couple of years earlier. Yet even back in the 80s there were studies even then that the cost of training and supporting users dwarfed the costs of buying the box, but most people could not quite bring themselves to believe this could possbly be true. Like in many things, the human capacity for inconsistency was amazing: it was not common for CEOs and top brass to have Macs and the troops to be equipped with PCs. Clearly they understood the value of quality to their own productivity. But, a loading dock full of computer crates was a tangible sign that you were making progress in "computerizing" your business.
Of course now people know the costs of training and support in spades, which is why you hear people bandying terms like "TCO" about when they thought this was mere flummery fifteen years ago. It's just the cost of other things like network security that they're blind about. I can confidently predict the world will settle on a cheap, half-assed solution to this problem and deal with the negative consequences for years to come.
The point is long winded story is not to say that Microsoft is evil for having succeeded with a product that was not very good. It's to point out that the tautological theory of merit ignores the way that real peole focus on the very short term. Often the company that wins is the one that keeps their customers focused on the short term. ARM in fact, got a lucky break; they are in a sense a failure in the desktop processor market, but succeeded by finding a niche in the embedded processor market. If for some reason their design drew several times the power, they could well be another entry on the roll of talented failures.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
First, ARM doesn't make all those chips, they design CPU cores. Chips are designed around those cores. As an example, pretty much all CDMA phones (Sprint and Verizon in the US, most of Japan and Korea, some of China) contain Qualcomm chips.
Second, ARM sucks because their compilers suck. Their compilers suck because the old ones generate buggy code and the new ones aren't backward-compatible with the old ones, so that their customers are stuck with old versions that aren't maintained any more. Worse, their compilers suck enough that some chip vendors decided to write their own compilers, which suck at least as much. Getting code that compiles and runs correctly on all ARM compilers is a challenge. And we're talking about C90 code here, not even C++ of C99. Even the newest compilers are very poor at optimizing code.
Third, ARM isn't the only company designing ARM CPUs. Digital did one, and now Intel does. Those chip families (StrongARM and XScale) were/are faster than anything that ARM designed themselves.
If you want a non-ARM cell-phone (as someone asked), look for a Siemens phone. Except for the latest S65, they pretty much all use a non-ARM CPU. The S55 is actually a good phone.
Embedded Systems usually do not have many issues with backwards compatibility. Switching to another core is not a big deal. Of course this doesn't apply with things like Palm Pilots where users load their own software
I used to work on a high-volume embedded product. The first generation used a popular Motorola chip, the 2nd used one based on ARM. Most of our C-code remained unchanged when we switched cores. Just some hardware-abstraction layer stuff, and that was less than 5% of the code.
to BE a monopoly. What's illegal is to abuse your monopoly status. If Arm doesn't abuse its position, then nobody will complain. Sometimes being a monopoly is a good thing - the higher your production, the higher your protential efficiency. If you are passing this savings to the consumer, everyone wins.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Alan Greenspan wrote about monopolies in a great essay simply called "Anti-trust". He makes the case that there are two types of monopolies. One type is like Microsoft. The other type maybe is like ARM, though I am not too familiar with ARM's situation. The example Mr. Greenspan used was ALCOA, an aluminum manufacturer at the time the essay was written. The company, he said, was a monopoly because it was so efficient at making its product that no one was at all capable of producing aluminum so cheaply. How this differs from a Microsoft monopoly is that if ALCOA used its monopoly status to inflate prices then it would cease to be a monopoly, since low prices are exactly what made it a monopoly. Thus it was not a coersive monopoly. He went on to point out how this has a net benefit for everyone (as anyone who understands the economics of efficiency knows) and denounced how the government was trying to punish ALCOA for being a monopoly. (IE-It was being punsihed for coming up with superior manufacturing techniques.) Perhaps a modern day ALCOA is Wal-Mart, which, putting aside you opinions on labour, largely sells thing cheaply because of their new innovations in supply chain logistics. I believe they came up with many new tricks in transporting inventory that make their inventory costs very low. So if Wal-Mart becomes (or is) a monopoly, it is because they have low prices. But if they try to strong-arm prices then they get screwed. This is why Wal-Mart is not harmful for consumers in the way Microsoft is.
"The State is that great fiction by which everyone lives at the expense of everyone else." -Frederic Bastiat.
Here's how we described the relationship in the PricewaterhouseCoopers publication Technology Forecast: 2002-2004 :
for some reason that I would expect has to do with how the instruction is implemented, one of the source operands (I forget whether it's the first or second) can't be the destination. Sure, you can swap the operands, unless you want to square a number (and don't need to keep the original around), but it's a pain.
Granted on x *= x, but in other cases, can't swapping mul operands be handled within the assembler rather than in the compiler, limiting the scope of the non-orthogonality?
Some sizes of load/store have 12-bit displacements; the ones added later, I think, (16-bit and one of the signednesses of 8-bit) only allow 5-bit displacements. A 5-bit displacement field is pretty darned small.
Granted, but what about those architectures that don't allow any nonzero displacement? Be glad you even have a displacement in order to allow quick access to structs. So in your code generator's documentation, give the following advice to programmers: when optimizing private structs for ARM, put "small" elements first to speed access.
Agreed, Thumb is designed to allow smaller code size, but the cost is major non-orthogonality.
Still, even in ARM mode, the code density still beats x86, if only for larger registers and thus fewer mov instructions to get variables on and off the stack. The 8- and 16-bit microcontrollers with which Thumb is designed to compete have even worse non-orthogonality.