( ESNUG 562 Item 2 ) -------------------------------------------- [07/22/16]
Subject: 68% of chip designers see SoftBank/ARM buyout as a long term BAD
MOST CHIP DESIGNERS NOT HAPPY: I want to thank the 186 chip designers and
chip verifiers who answered this quickie survey on the SoftBank/ARM buyout.
Here's the results:
SURVEY QUESTION
The Wall Street Journal just confirmed that Japan's SoftBank is
acquiring ARM Holdings for ~32 billion U.S. dollars in cash.
AS A CHIP DESIGNER or CHIP VERIFIER, how do you think this will
impact your company's chip designs?
SHORT TERM (Choose one) is this GOOD, or BAD, or NEUTRAL news?
GOOD: #### 8%
BAD: ######## 16%
NEUTRAL: ##################################### 74%
LONG TERM (Choose one) is this GOOD, or BAD, or NEUTRAL news?
GOOD: ###### 12%
BAD: ################################## 68%
NEUTRAL: ########## 19%
It comes as no surprise that 74% see SoftBank/ARM as NEUTRAL short term.
What was interesting here were the 68% who see it BAD long term. Their
reasons from their comments broke out to:
bad for Britain: ####### 7%
IoT is a coming bubble: ############ 12%
Japan engineers too conservative: ############# 13%
will cause ARM price increases: ################### 19%
kills ARM innovation/eco-system: ############## 14%
looking into RICS-V/MIPS/DW ARC now: #################### 20%
While 8 Brits answered this survey, 7 commented. Not one was an ARMH
employee. And since it's a UK company we're discussing, I'll let their
voices be the first heard in the comments section.
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BRITISH REACTIONS
SHORT TERM: Neutral
LONG TERM: Bad
Timed to take advantage of our Brexit vote weakening the pound.
I don't believe empty promises of doubling UK employees while
simulataneously saying SoftBank won't change ARMH.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
SHORT TERM: Neutral
LONG TERM: Bad
This is the Tory Party selling our children's future to foreigners
for a 43% premium on their shares. Years from now those double
the UK hires will be shown to be false.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
NEUTRAL
Change takes time. It won't happen overnight.
BAD
The Tories are idiots. This is carting off British world technology
leadership for a few pounds. Double UK headcount my ass. Cameron
shouldn't have called the Brexit vote when he did. What's next?
Selling Gibraltar to the Spanish?
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Long term BAD for the UK.
The $32 B acquisition price itself is a bribe under British fair
trade practice for not opening up to all reasonable offers.
By fair trade, I mean the rules that the Industrial League of
Trade Associations established long ago. And this comes exactly
at that point of transition in British government aiding to
conceal the theft of ARM -- with no one looking at an offer too
good to be true.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Short term NEUTRAL
Long term GOOD
Short term nothing will change. APM in August in Cambridge as usual.
Longer term the investment will strengthen ARM. I hear a doubling of
staff within 5 years.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
SHORT TERM: NEUTRAL
LONG TERM: BAD
It took 25 years for the UK to lead the world in CPU design. It took
5 weeks of Boris's battle buses to hand it over to the Japanese.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
SHORT TERM: NEUTRAL
LONG TERM: BAD
I don't see how this can be good. The next logical step is the cost
of ARM licenses going up and R&D spending going down despite the soon
to be empty assurances from Mr. Son about increasing headcount
significantly (pandering to the British Government so they wouldn't
block the sale.)
Nikesh Arora was hired at enormous cost to run Softbank, and in June
he quit. I'm pretty sure that spending $32 billion for ARM might have
had something to do with it along with the extremely high debt load
that Softbank is carrying.
Look at the money that Softbank sunk into Sprint. Sprint is in the
dumps. Shares of AT&T and Verizon have been among the best performing
large cap stocks amid growing investor demand for high-dividend-paying
stocks as global interest rates fall.
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BAD & BAD
ARM is practically a technology unto itself. It is not a good idea
to sell ARM technology to any company external to the the West in
general.
I'm surprised that with so many UK ITAR government import and export
regulations and all one has to do is buy the company to bypass them.
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IOT AND SELF-DRIVING CARS
Neutral and Bad
This is a $32 billion wager that the upcoming IoT bubble won't
mirror the Internet bubble of the late 2000's.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Short: Neutral
Long: Bad
Every Silicon Valley tech con keynote today says IoT and self-driving
cars are the wave of the future. All those smart people couldn't be
wrong could they?
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Short term:
Bad, one reason for the deal is accelerating IoT design cycles.
How can one secure a return on IoT investment tomorrow for a new
design spin that is already obsolete today? Acceleration of
design cycles leaves only the largest design producers to reap
the rewards of their accelerations.
Long term:
BAD, ARM's success is established on the mass of the development
consortium they steward. This will fall apart once the Japanese
press them to cut costs and bring in more revenues.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
SHORT TERM: Neutral.
LONG TERM: Bad.
SoftBank is not involved in automotive applications. While ARM has
potential growth automotive. With their rapid investment in car
parking assistance and car auto-pilot, ARM is getting involved more
and more. This might die as under SoftBank's instance for more
present day revenues instead of future experimental projects.
Moreover, Apple is SoftBank's main customer, more or less, while
ARM is neutral with all the smartphone providers. That might change
under SoftBank's guidance. That scares me as well, actually a lot!
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
SHORT TERM: NEUTRAL
LONG TERM: GOOD
Softbank has more financial depth to invest in ARM and in the areas
of Internet of Things and autonomous automobile plus others.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
SHORT TERM - NEUTRAL
Shouldn't be much impact in the next 3-6 months for funded programs.
LONG TERM - BAD
If the focus and growth is IoT, then all the non-IoT programs are
going to be in question and some will probably get chopped. Any new
non-IoT CPU's (and the higher end they are) would assume to be
at high risk unless they are supporting cell phones.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Short Term (NEUTRAL) : We are Cadence Innovus users and our high
performance ARM CPUs are mainly driven through the Cadence-ARM
handshake. We expect to a see any turbulence in the near future.
Long Term (GOOD): We believe ARM will get access to broader IoT
business horizons with SoftBank.
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BAD
In short term, the ARM license and/or royalty may be increased.
BAD
In long term, Softbank will create IoT and CPU IP by themselves.
We semiconductor companies may be out of their development and/or
supply chain.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Short term: no impact. Neutral.
Long term: Bad.
ARM starts competing against us since Softbank holdings has other IoT
silicon system companies in their portfolio and ARM either transitions
into making silicon or ARM gives their "internal customers" special
deals. ARM is already doing radio silicon today (not announced yet
AFAIK).
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THE JAPANESE ENGINEERING/BUSINESS STYLE IS DIFFERENT
Short Term: Neutral.
Very low risk because the product is currently stable and systems are
in place for the near future.
Long Term: Bad.
Japanese businesses shy away from quick advancement because of fear of
failure which may lead to "loss of face". They also have a very top
down engineering development model.
Cortex and Mali development will slow and any advancements will be in
small increments. This will be good news for ARM competitors.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
SHORT TERM neutral, I don't expect my supply chain (Xilinx, Intel) to
be impacted by this in the next year
LONG TERM bad, like all other large Japanese organization SoftBank
tends to slow innovation, and ARM R&D is all about agile product
proliferation for very short product cycles.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
NEUTRAL
I think we will continue using ARM IPs for our ongoing applications:
Smartphones, Servers ... because ARM provides the best IP for now.
GOOD
SoftBank's CEO is a serious innovator and we can hope it will give
an additional wind of new applications for ARM like in the humanoid
robot field.
I'm hoping that in between Japan will not face a financial tsunami.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
SHORT TERM: Neutral.
LONG TERM: Bad.
In the long run, SoftBank is likely to be intrusive in ARM's choice
of technology bets or investments and I am not sure I can or want
to rely on Masayoshi Son to make those calls.
Also, Masayoshi may be tempted to "pick the winners" amongst the ARM
licensee base, this disrupting the semi industry...
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SHORT TERM: GOOD
because whenever merger/acquistion happens, good companies continue the
same strategies for customer which was existing. So there should not
be problems.
LONG TERM: BAD
because Japan owned companies/acquisitions are bad performers. Japan
semi industry is shrinking. They are slow movers. Telecommunication,
consumer, networking are fast moving technology markets. ARM created
the leading edge by remaining in leadership for such CPUs. Japanese
companies has no strong experience/history of making/enahancing such
CPUs. How they will manage ARM is big question!
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
No impact. Lets go with a NEUTRAL/NEUTRAL, but it is a BIG deal
(literally and figuratively), so any changes will have wide impact.
Both Short Term and Long Term will depend on the changes to the
license terms for both the hard and soft IP. It is not clear
to me how Japan enforces license agreements and how SoftBank/ARM
will deal with China.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Short term I think this is NEUTRAL because our company has their own
internal DSP cores.
Long term I think this is GOOD because Japan SoftBank will fuck it
up, thereby providing less competition to us.
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BAD and BAD
Short term will only cause complications to potential licensing. So
neutral to bad.
Long term semi performance in Japan has been abysmal. Track record
is lousy. Adding another country into the legal mix can't be good.
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BAD on both counts.
Why is SoftBank buying ARM anyways?
It makes no sense from a product/customer point of view for SoftBank.
Is this just some investment they are expecting to sell off in the
near-term again for a good margin?
Have they purchased ARM on behalf of the Japanese IC industry so that
they can license ARM cores to the Japanese IC companies for cheap
while the rest of the world pays dearly?
Overall I don't expect anything good from this.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
I'm a Japanese engineer in a Japanese company.
SHORT TERM (3 years) - NEUTRAL
ARM's business model is a successful one and I don't think it will be
meddled up for at least next few years, thereby causing no changes to
existing ARM based controller development projects.
LONG TERM - GOOD
Better deals expected for Japanese MCU design companies.
Due to its Japanese connection, SB's strong upcoming interest in H/W
and the ongoing shift of Japanese MCU makers from their proprietary
cores towards ARM, we can expect better deals for these companies due
to the take-over by SB, which otherwise may not have happened.
In addition, the future of healthcare, (semi) autonomous vehicles,
IoT and several other areas uses substantial automation, AI and
robotics which were pioneered here in Japan. Millions of ARM based
controllers will be used in developing applications in these areas,
so invariably Japanese MCU makers stand to benefit from this deal.
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PRICES WILL GO UP & INNOVATION WILL GO DOWN
I think there will be less ARM openness and higher licensing fees.
SHORT TERM NEUTRAL
The terms of the acquisition keep all ARM staff in same location,
so no immediate disruption
LONG TERM BAD
Because the strategic goals of SoftBank will be higher revenues, so
licensing prices will probably go up and/or additional ways of making
money at customers expense will be introduced (SW costs, training
costs, services and consulting).
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Short term NEUTRAL
Don't believe SoftBank will perturb ARM's positive current direction
Long term BAD
They need to make a return on this huge investment so there will be
pressure to raise royalty levels, which ain't cheap on the V8 cores!
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SHORT TERM NEUTRAL
I guess most of the ARM integrators have frame contracts that cover
the short term developments
LONG TERM BAD
When you pay ~32 billion U.S. dollars, you have in mind a way to get
your money back -- and more. I don't see the synergy of these two
companies together getting more money in the door. But I do see
SoftBank pressuring ARM to increase fees on its cores or worst.
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SHORT TERM : NEUTRAL
LONG TERM : BAD... Prices will go up.
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BAD. The impact will likely to be seen as quick as in a few weeks.
BAD. So far ARM has not really leveraged its market dominance to
gain extra-high profit. This practice is probably rooted in
British Empire's self-projected, outdated and silly, cosmopolitan
view of world affairs.
Changing this will be a major profit-making opportunity by SoftBank.
Prices for anything ARM have just now gone up.
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SHORT TERM: NEUTRAL
We're just a low end (Cortex M0) customer. Nothing will change here.
LONG TERM: BAD I think.
Probably less drive towards innovation and long term success, more
drive towards short time profit.
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This will raise price of chips that use ARM cores.
SHORT TERM:
Little bad, price raise will be depress sales.
LONG TERM:
Neutral, because it will spur growth in ARM competitors.
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SHORT TERM is NEUTRAL, they promise they won't change IP policy
LONG TERM is BAD news, change would be possible to occur, meaning
price increases.
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SHORT TERM: NEUTRAL
LONG TERM: BAD
In the short term, prices and support should not change.
In the long term, it will be questionable whether ARM's R&D and
support will continue; like when Google bought Motorola Moble,
or when Microsoft bought Nokia.
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Short term NEUTRAL
I think it is overall BAD long term. I expected that ARM license
prices/royalties will go up since SoftBank will have to show fiscal
benefits from this $32 B acquisition.
SoftBank and ARMH started to discuss this before Brexit and the
devaluation of the British Pound. SoftBank just got lucky to pay
less now on a Yen basis. Otherwise they would have paid even more
for ARMH. Still SoftBank need to show some direct benefits to
off-set all that cash.
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SHORT TERM neutral
LONG TERM bad
Less and less competing companies are bad for competition. Bigger
company is less flexible in all aspects.
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ARMH + SOFTBANK == BAD TECHNICAL MATCH
Neutral
Bad
Not fond of a cell phone company in direct control of tech company
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SHORT TERM: NEUTRAL
Normally not much damage is done or even possible until acquisition
plans get put into place; typically 6-9 months out. After that....
LONG TERM: BAD
Adding lots of staff with no long term plans for them is a recipe for
disaster. Competing agendas, competing for resources, political
infighting, etc. are all possible if this is not managed carefully.
Any significant change to the corporate culture could seriously damage
ARM morale and productivity.
Also, key large customers may get nervous about having a potential
"competitor" in charge of their product architecture and roadmap now.
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NEUTRAL in the short term.
Probably BAD long-term.
They are not going to discontinue any IP cores, at least not this year.
Going forward, the fact that ARM cores now belong to a Japanese company
who are not really focused on the chip business will probably cause
reduced R&D spending.
This is an opportunity for somebody else to take over the 64-bit
processor market.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Short term: Very Bad
Disarray of new ownership, unclear priorities, loss of good people
currently sitting on the fence to move to other companies
Long term: Very Bad
Any time a foreign holding company takes over a tech company there
is great risk of lack of appreciation for the technology aspect of
running the business and more emphasis on cost savings.
Not clear also how much of a distraction having to report to outsiders
will be to ARM's management.
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SHORT TERM GOOD
With the conservative UK-ARMH approach, SB brings risk abilities; an
added plus. Existing customers would continue to look up to ARM
very positively so good in short term
LONG TERM GOOD
ARM started stagnating in CPU research/development. Hopefully, this
kind of big backing and risk taking, future CPU developments will get
a needed impetus.
Every organization has an optimal time and size, and a change will
trigger good things.
For example, ARM is nowhere in the machine learning/big data analysis
ready CPUs. They have to research in multiple dimensions to be
relevant. Nvidia is ahead of ARM in this space.
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I am a Chip Designer. I am Neutral for both short term and long term.
I have no idea how a Japanese holding company owning ARM will change
anything, but am looking forward to hearing the pros and cons from
your survey results.
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SHORT TERM : NEUTRAL
LONG TERM : BAD
Short term arm needs to keep their customers happy. Long term I'm
concerned that SoftBank management may not be technical and savvy
enough and thus destroy ARM.
I've seen it too many times. Big company buys smaller company;
Mismanages small company; Small company gets destroyed by no future,
no hope ...
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SHORT TERM: NEUTRAL
LONG TERM: BAD
Acquisitions rarely go well. SoftBank is entering a market it may not
understand. This may be a good opening for RISC-V, MIPS, or even Intel.
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SOFTBANK IS PAYING TOO MUCH
SHORT TERM: BAD
LONG TERM: BAD
ARMH revenue is $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion.
ARMH net income is $400 million to $500 million.
Paying $32 billion for $450 million annual net income is 71X. It
will take 71 years before this acquisition will pay for itself.
It's an investment with a 1.4 percent return. Not impressive.
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Short Term Neutral
Long Term Bad
To fork out $32 billion for a $1.5 billion assest is bad business.
Mr. San will have to drive ARM into the ground to see any better
return than $2.0 billion on ARM.
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Neutral & Neutral
At $32 billion, I don't see Apple, nor Samsung, nor Qualcomm, nor
Google, nor Intel trying to outbid SoftBank on this.
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I could maybe see $10 to $15 billion for ARM. Not $32 billion.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
SHORT TERM: NEUTRAL
We design memory ICs. I don't see a direct short term impact on my
business.
It is probably a good thing for ARM's competitors exploiting FUD for
some period of time.
I'd have to believe the Intel Mobile people are likely looking at
how to leverage this to their advantage.
LONG TERM: GOOD
To me it seems that ARM's major licensees selling merchant processors
were in a bit of a tight spot: on the hook to pay big $$$ to ARM but
seeing so much commoditization and competition as to be unattractive
from a business perspective. It's difficult to get the chip designs
right, so quite a bit of risk when making ICs and perhaps only a low
margin expectation. May not be so attractive.
I have to believe that Softbank will strongly emphasize bizdev in China
and there's purportedly a lot of fab capacity being built over there.
Might be a huge surge in the proliferation of ARM architecture with
no one making much money doing it. Asian companies have different
margin expectations vs Western companies.
SoftBank/ARM likely creates memory sockets for me as this grows; and
mostly on the low end, IoT, etc.
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Hard to say. Softbank is in deep debt. It may have good or bad
reflections on ARM itself. ARM itself was strong; new management
is not always better results.
For my company, I say short term - GOOD ; long term GOOD
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I believe both short term and long term are NEUTRAL.
I think for SoftBank this is just a financial investment because
SoftBank has nothing in the chip and IP business.
I also guess SoftBank will leave ARM alone and let ARM operate
independently.
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ALTERNATIVES LIKE RISC-V ARE COMING!
SHORT TERM: NEUTRAL
There is tremendous momentum in ARM's ecosystem. In my company, we
don't even consider non-ARM architectures, with the exception of DSPs.
We generally use open source tools for firmware development and
debugging plus a few commercial tools from long established players,
such as Lauterbach. None of this will change quickly.
LONG TERM: BAD
I think it is bad for ARM's ecosystem in the long-term and it will put
some air into RISC-V's sails. With ARM based in the UK, ARM needs
their customers and partners just as much as ARM needs them. The ARM
ecosystem that has evolved has mutual benefits and interdependencies.
ARM under SoftBank will be under pressure to pay off that $32 billion
Japanese mortgage. ARM will be cutting costs everywhere. The ARM
eco-system will decay as time passes.
RISC-V got some interest, but nobody took it seriously because of the
ARM eco-system. Will the ARM customers and partners in that ecosystem
want to hedge their bets with an open ISA now that ARMH will have to
serve its new master's interest in some unknown way? I think the
history of the computer industry says yes.
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I believe in the short term there will be NEUTRAL impact.
In the long term this will be BAD impact.
The reason being in the long term ARM will be held by a Japanese
telecom. Most large system houses and open source vendors may
not feel its safe enough to build their products around ARM
architecture.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Short: No impact
Long: Good
This opens the door for open source ISA like RISC-V to become viable.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
NEUTRAL
BAD
My management just went into internal meeting to discuss the future
possiblities of RISC-V, ImagTec MIPS, ARC, Atom, and even OpenPower.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Short Term: NEUTRAL.
Little to zilch. Generally nothing much happens for 4-6 months on a
huge acquisition/merger because they have to go through the CF phase
(cluster fuck). Many people will be running around like chickens with
their heads chopped off. Then there will be some quiet layoffs and
"filtration". Look what's happening to NXP/Freescale now.
Thus, nothing will happen to IPs, design models, licensing, royalties,
etc. for the short term.
Long Term: BAD.
I'm not sure Mr. Son's decisions are all that great. A few years ago
Softbank acquires Sprint, who can go arm-in-arm with AT&T as the
suckiest telecom company. SoftBank lost lots of money on Sprint and
still carry big debt on that acquisition.
Now, anyone touching, using, or buying ARM can't be wrong, right? Many
years ago anyone buying IBM could't be wrong. What's IBM doing lately?
I think Softbank will either screw up the partnership model or limit
ARM to Softbank's way of doing business -- which will turn people away.
I predict that Designware ARC, some startup, or RICS-V will then bypass
or replace the ARM architecture.
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SHORT TERM this is NEUTRAL news. ARM has existing license agreements
and revenue streams that COULD allow them to remain an independent
operation.
That said, LONG TERM this is BAD news. SoftBank is in the top 100
largest companies in the world. And while there might be some synergy
between this acquisition and the fact that SoftBank has telecom
subsidiaries (such as SPRINT), ARM is already the preferred CPU for
wireless devices so driving deeper in this area will not yield
substantial growth or profits.
Time will tell if this acquisition follows the norm of:
(1) "big" company swallows "small" company profitable company
(2) over time "big" company extracts all "small" company profits
(3) eventually "big" company dismantles "small" company claiming
that "small" company is not profitable enough to be maintained
as a standalone subsidiary
IMHO, if this acquisition is approved (and Apple, Samsung, or Google
don't start a bidding war over ARM), the only one who potentially could
win would be Intel assuming Intel focus its R&D on low power, battery
powered chips for wireless devices instead of bringing to market yet
another x86 processor no one wants or needs.
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We're not buying from ARM now. Will have to think it through if we
choose to switch from MIPS to ARM in the future.
SHORT TERM: Neutral, nothing is likely to change in the short term.
LONG TERM: Neutral, possibly bad.
Probably neutral, doesn't sound likely that SoftBank will buy ARM to
gut it, and it will probably have to keep ARM's bigger customers
happy enough to avoid switching to a different ISA, which many could
do if provoked.
A potential bad outcome is that those companies actually buying ARM's
CPU designs rather than architecture licenses will have less options
available, if SoftBank chooses to prioritize a few key areas over
others. Perhaps it's more likely with SoftBank than an independent
ARM who always "wanted every socket".
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We use an ARM CPU architecure in our every product, and I think ARM
will continue current roadmap and price, so there won't be any change
in the short time.
But in the long term it will be bad because of security. And I am
afraid SoftBank will raise its price of every ARM product to reduce
its debt. We would then try substution of RISC-V or DW ARC.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Neutral in short term.
There will be no direct impact in the short term.
Good in long term.
It will push the company to invest more in the CPU and IP development.
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THE ARM CULTURE WILL DIE OFF
SHORT TERM: Neutral.
LONG TERM: Bad.
We purchase an ARM IP, not only because it has a high quality, but
because of the complete package they provide. Including, compiler,
debugger, support ... etc. This might drop off to save costs.
If too many changes in the ARM management and layoffs occur, then
many of their customers would run away and even new startups would
pull in to find their way developing replacement IPs.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Short Term: BAD because I am not sure how the management will change
and if ARM will be same kind of commpany as it is now.
Long Term: BAD because it might change the core of how ARM is managed.
---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
NEUTRAL
NEUTRAL
Unless the acquisition causes key talent to leave, the ARM line
should continue as it is.
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IT'S NOT OUR PROBLEM
Both SHORT TERM and LONG TERM = NEUTRAL news.
Our company has not any business contacts with ARM. And we are not
planning to have in future. We use CPU/GPU IPs from other vendors.
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NEUTRAL. My company's chip designs use SPARC cores, not ARM.
NEUTRAL. My company has no plans to ever use ARM cores.
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Don't care. We use DW ARC cores.
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Good and Good.
Very simple. Look at what SoftBank so far has done with its other
acquisitions: They left them alone.
ARM will continue to do as good or bad as it would have alone. It
now just has more money backing it.
I do NOT like ARM nor the processor architecture behind it, but it's
good short term and long term.
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I work at a silicon fab. I don't need to worry about who owns the
company that draws the polygons just as long a they continue to
draw them, at least some of the time, for the customers that want
those polygons printed in our production lines.
So, short term, great news for all my close friends who are reaping
some monetary benefit this morning, but long term, this is Neutral.
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We are currently using an ARM core via TI's CC3200, but don't expect
any impact.
Short term this is good news as the semi industry is experiencing
another downturn and this consolidation is good. It should create
a stable future for ARM.
Long Term remains to be seen. Neutral. Don't expect significant
changes in access or cost, but will see. As one of the original
6502 engineers (the ARM core is based on the 6502 processor) at
Rockwell for Atari and having worked with three of the engineers
who left Motorola for MOS Technology, this is relatively innocuous.
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Related Articles:
68% of chip designers see SoftBank/ARM buyout as a long term BAD
64% of EDA/IP vendors see SoftBank/ARM buyout as a long term GOOD
Simon Segars' private memo to the ARM APM partners about SoftBank
ARM/SNPS/MENT rock IP survey while CDNS has embarrassing 2nd year
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