ARM’s v8 gets 50 licences and is going for 100

ARM Cortex A53, based on ARMv8-A

v8, ARM’s 64-bit processor architecture, is being widely adopted. Seven licences were signed in Q2, making 50 in all. “50 v8 licences signed – 100 to go,” says ARM evp Pete Hutton.

v8 seems set to deliver royalties quite quickly. Three chip-makers have announced 64-bit chips to go into the server and networking markets.

One is the 48 core v8 64-bit 2.5GHz Cavium processor called ThunderX. “ThunderX will enable Cavium to be the first ARM-based vendor to deliver the performance and features required by today’s volume server market at half the power and significantly lower cost compared to competing solutions,” says processor guru Linley Gwennap.

As well as ThunderX, there’s Applied Micro’s eight v8 core X-Gene processor and AMD’s eight v8 core Seattle processor. The Cavium, AMD and Applied Micro v8-based processors are all due for sampling in Q4.

Hutton sees the server market as a 50 million unit a year opportunity and ARM aspires to a 5-10% market share by 2017. This year it expects a ‘single digit percentage’ share.

ARM’s physical IP division saw a 41% increase in licences in Q2. ARM is well up with the game. “We’re providing physical IP on 16nm, starting advanced product development on 10nm, and 7nm is in R&D,” says Hutton.

Physical IP is not a big business for ARM – it brought in about $35 million in Q2 revenues – but it’s a key implementer for ARM-based SOCs and all the major foundries take it. More than 100 licences have now been sold for ARM physical IP.

ARM sees IOT as a market catalyst but does not appear to target product development at it. Asked if ARM does anything to its product line specifically to address IOT, Hutton replies: “Our product line is designed for IOT – wearables use IP from ARM – these devices are based on our strengths.”

The outward and visible sign of that strength is a booming demand for ARM microcontroller core licences – which now number 240. 20 out of Q2′s 41 new processor licences were for the microcontroller core Cortex-M.

ARM is generating increasing amounts of cash – nearly £87 million in Q2 which it has added to its £746 million cash hoard – up from £706 million at the end of last year.

Asked what ARM knows about the market that the rest of us don’t, Hutton replies: “We get a lot of information from our partners which we can’t share,” adding: “TSMC publishes its wafer shipments every month.” In fact reports out of Taiwan say that TSMC is so over-booked that customers are offering to pay a 5% premium to get their wafers.

All of which goes to explain why ARM anticipates ‘an acceleration in royalty revenue growth in H2′.

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via Yuichun