Arm Ltd said that it does not expect licensing activities to fall due to short-term shock from a US-China trade dispute, as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies remain key growth drivers.
The UK-based company’s comments came despite concerns that a US ban on technology sales to Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and curbs on telecom operators using Huawei’s 5G equipment could hamper innovation investments and impede progress toward 5G commercialization.
“In the short term, there is volatility,” Rene Haas, President of Arm’s Intellectual Property (IP) Products Group, told the Taipei Times in an exclusive interview in Taipei on Tuesday.
Photo courtesy of Arm Ltd
“All the opportunity is there. I think the long-term investment trend is very bright,” Haas said.
“There are a lot of investment in innovation” on machine learning, for example, he said.
One of indicators for investments is that “it is very, very hard to find an engineer,” he said.
Arm licenses IP to companies that build chips for end devices. As it is a long production process, chip designers need to engage with Arm to license new-generation technologies for products to go on shelves two years later.
“If the companies do not engage with us now, they are basically not believing in the future... We are very, very busy,” Haas said.
Arm saw significant investments being made on hardware and software for autonomous vehicles, AI and machine learning technologies, which will bring massive change to people’s lives and to revolutionize the world, Haas said.
Those are among the growth areas that Arm is encouraged to invest in by parent company Softbank Group Corp, he said.
Since Softbank acquired ARM in 2016, it has boosted investment and expanded its workforce by 50 percent to 6,000, he said. Most of the new employees are engineers, he said, adding: “We are still hiring.”
That includes Dipti Vachani, a former vice president of Intel Corp’s Internet of Things business, who in November last year took charge of Arm’s automotive and embedded businesses.
Arm China, a joint venture between Arm and HOPU Investment Management Co (厚朴基金), still operates normally, Haas said.
That is despite suspending all activities with Huawei in compliance with US law.
Arm has said it “is complying with the latest restrictions set forth by the US government and is having ongoing conversations with the appropriate US government agencies to ensure we remain compliant.”
It “values its relationship with our longtime partner HiSilicon Technologies Inc (海思半導體) and we are hopeful for a swift resolution on this matter,” Arm said last week.
Arm China started operations in April last year, with an aim to resell IP to Chinese customers and develop its own products for the China market, unveiling its first product in October last year.
Commenting on the market for data centers, Haas said that Arm Ltd no longer pursues a 25 percent market share.
The overall infrastructure market has changed dramatically, with much of the cloud computing work shifted to devices such as networking routers and switches, he said.
“So for us, the line is getting kind of blurred in terms of what is the market share in the server looks like,” he said.
About 1 percent of processors used in data centers use Arm’s structure.
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