ARM allegedly wants to continue selling its own CPUs

The investment fund Softbank is said to be interested in the processor designer Ampere Computing. A takeover would give the Softbank subsidiary ARM the expertise to design and manufacture its own complete processors in one fell swoop.

The US news agency Bloomberg reports on the possible takeover, citing internal sources. To date, ARM has mainly designed CPU cores that other companies can license and integrate into their own processors. Alternatively, licensees can design their own ARM-compatible cores. This now includes Ampere: the company used to take over the Neoverse cores, but has since designed its own. Production is handled by the chip contract manufacturer TSMC.

During the court hearing between ARM and Qualcomm, it became clear that ARM has ambitions for its own processors. ARM CEO Rene Haas did not rule out the possibility of pursuing such plans in the future.

Arguments for and against

Own processors would be an option to expand revenue streams. Ampere would be a suitable takeover candidate because the company has not been able to assert itself on the market on its own for years. The only known major buyer of Ampere CPUs is Oracle. Other hyperscalers either design their own processors directly, including Amazon, Google, Meta and Nvidia, or buy x86 models from AMD and Intel.

Additional competition could soon come from Qualcomm: The company is currently building up a server team, with Intel's longstanding Xeon chief architect Sailesh Kottapalli recently moving to Qualcomm. The ARM cores from the acquired company Nuvia were originally intended for server processors.

It is questionable whether ARM is even allowed to take over a CPU designer in order to sell its own processors. Antitrust authorities prohibited Nvidia from taking over ARM in 2022 because the company would then have entered into direct competition with ARM licensees.

(mma)