Intel has finalized an agreement with Advanced Risc Machines, the Cambridge, England-based microprocessor designer, to continue production and development of Digital Equipment Corp’s popular 32-bit RISC StrongARM processor. Details will be unveiled at the Embedded Systems 1998 show in Stuttgart, Germany, which opens today [Wednesday]. Despite Intel’s dominance of the desktop processor market and an increasing presence in servers and workstations, the $25bn giant is currently weak in the small mobile and embedded microprocessor market – its i960 offering is losing market share in a rapidly expanding market. Should Intel now decide to actively push StrongARM, the deal could help ARM CEO Robin Saxby achieve his ambition of selling 100 million ARM processors annually by the turn of the century. Digital’s StrongARM team was transferred to Intel in October as part of its litigation settlement, but the deal was subject to the successful renegotiation of an agreement with ARM, which supplies the core StrongARM design. At the time there was speculation regarding Intel’s real enthusiasm for taking on StrongARM, given the company’s ‘not made here’ mentality. ARM, a fab-less, chip-less developer, earns its revenues from selling its core designs to third-parties, typically large multinational electronics companies such as NEC, Rockwell, Samsung and Sony. Royalties from partners account for approximately 50% of revenues and the company also sells services such as consulting and training. It has grown by an average of 70% annually since being spun out of Acorn Computers, which still has a 43% shareholding, in 1990, and is tipped for a stock market flotation in the near future. The StrongARM processor was the result of collaboration between ARM and Digital. It was intended to mitigate the running costs of Digital’s under-used Hudson, Massachusetts foundry, as well as adding a high-speed processor to ARM’s line-up. Running at between 100MHz and 233MHz, it is capable of executing up to 300 dhrystone MIPS (million instructions per second), which makes it comparable to standard Intel Pentium processors, but it consumes less than 15% of the power, making it more suitable for mobile computing than standard Intel ‘gas-guzzlers’.
Computer Business Review
