Talk:Arm Holdings/Archives/2015

"Architectural License"
I found this section confusing, hoping this is a quick fix for someone who is well-informed:

-- "ARM licenses their instruction sets, allowing the licensees to design their own cores that implement one of those instruction sets. An ARM architectural licence is more costly than a regular ARM core licence,[52] and also requires the necessary engineering power to design a CPU based on the instruction set." --

The term "architectural license" was introduced here without being defined; does this refer to the instruction-set-only license described in the first sentence? The change in terminology is confusing.

And for someone who doesn't know a ton about ARM Holdings but is generally well-informed about CPU design, it seems *wildly* counterintuitive that buying a whole design from ARM costs less than just buying permission to use their instruction set. So counterintuitive that IMO it could use explanation in this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LittleWalrus (talk • contribs) 21:10, 22 July 2014‎ (UTC)




 * Yes. I've updated the page; hopefully it now makes it clearer.


 * As for the cost of an architectural license, my guess would be that if you purchase a core design the cost is usually per-unit while, if you purchase an architectural license, it's a one-time purchase, so the price is high so that if Apple or Qualcomm or Nvidia or... sells a ton of chips, ARM doesn't lose out too badly. That's just a guess on my part, though so it's "original research" and not appropriate; if there are references giving the price schedules for various licenses, that would help. Guy Harris (talk) 23:18, 22 July 2014 (UTC)
 * My guess you can buy core or both, not just architectural. comp.arch (talk) 23:02, 23 July 2014 (UTC)
 * There is an article about seven ARM license types: "The ARM Diaries, Part 1: How ARM’s Business Model Works", Anand (image from ARM) or "A long look at how ARM licenses chips", Semiaccurate (ps: there is also some royalty per chip in every license).
 * There are 2 easiest licenses: Academic and DesignStart which can't be used for mass production. Then there is "single use license" - >=$1 mln per each IP core of Cortex-A* (for every project) + 2% from all chips sold.
 * "Multi-use license" allow company to develop several chips (any number of projects) with some fixed IP core from ARM in several years (e.g. 3).
 * "Perpetual multi-use license" is like multi-use but not limited in time. Company may use the licensed core in any number of projects, in any time (up to 10-20 years).
 * "Subscription license" allows to use several different cores from ARM portfolio for some fixed time term. The price is tens of millions dollars.
 * "Architecture license": specs of cores and full testsuite. "free to take that architecture and implement it however you’d like", so it allows to use ARM patents to freely develop ARM-compatible cores. Several opensource ARM cores were killed by ARM with patents on some instructions from ARMv3, ARMv6, v7... `a5b (talk) 15:02, 16 September 2014 (UTC)


 * And, in fact, those two articles are citations for ARM Holdings in the "Licensees" section. Guy Harris (talk) 19:07, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

ARM architecture licenses list
Current list of ARM architecture licenses, please update here (there should be 15 of them ): `a5b (talk) 15:02, 16 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Applied Micro (v8) ,
 * Broadcom (v8+v7),
 * Cavium, (v8) ,
 * Huawei (v8) ,
 * Nvidia (v8 denver) ,
 * AMD (v8) ,
 * Samsung (v8 was planned)
 * Apple (v8+v7, secretly)


 * Faraday Technology (ARMv4, ARMv5), Marvell Technology Group ,
 * Texas Instruments (some older ARM, they don't use the arch license, doing only optimization of ARM supplied cores)
 * Microsoft (v7 2010),
 * Qualcomm (v7,  but there should be v8 too)
 * Intel (may be some very old... from DEC? )

Sansa acquisition in 2015
The acquisition section is out of date, sansa security needs adding to the list. See http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/arm-expands-iot-security-capability-with-acquisition-of-sansa-security.php Danieljabailey (talk) 19:20, 17 September 2015 (UTC)