Arm Holdings is charting a bold new course by exploring the development of its own chipsets, CEO Rene Haas said during the company's fiscal first-quarter earnings call. The move reflects Arm's ambition to evolve beyond its traditional licensing model and address rising demand for integrated silicon solutions from cloud providers and OEMs.
During its fiscal first-quarter earnings call on July 30, Arm's CEO Rene Haas outlined the company's intention to broaden its offerings beyond its established chip platforms. Haas indicated that Arm is actively exploring opportunities to expand into new subsystems, chiplets, and potentially full end-to-end solutions. This shift aims to address the growing complexity of semiconductor design and the increasing demand from both emerging customers like cloud service providers and traditional original equipment manufacturers seeking advanced starting points for system-on-chip (SoC) development.
"We're looking now at the viability of moving beyond the current platform to additional subsystems, chiplets, or possibly full solutions. Now inside the company, we have either inside or access to all the expertise and technologies we would need to design, implement, and have a chiplet, for example, manufactured," said Haas.
Haas emphasized that the company's compute subsystem (CSS) has surpassed initial expectations and now serves as a foundation for deeper integration efforts. Many contemporary chiplets utilize Arm intellectual property (IP), positioning the company favorably to support comprehensive chiplet design and manufacturing through its total design ecosystem. Although the expansion presents notable technical and execution challenges, Haas expressed confidence in Arm's ability to navigate them, citing the semiconductor expertise within the company's leadership and its extensive in-house capabilities.
Haas highlighted Arm's distinctive presence across a broad range of computing devices, spanning low-power applications that operate in the milliwatt range to hyperscale data centers consuming MW of power. This wide spectrum reportedly equips Arm to deliver scalable and efficient solutions unmatched by competitors. According to Haas, this enables the company to consider solutions spanning from small to large, complex chips effectively. Arm continues to investigate these possibilities to strengthen its market leadership and respond to evolving design and manufacturing needs within the semiconductor industry.
Article edited by Jack Wu
