Doug S (foo.delete@this.bar.bar) on February 27, 2019 3:04 pm wrote:
> Paul A. Clayton (paaronclayton.delete@this.gmail.com) on February 27, 2019 1:32 pm wrote:
> > An arms dealer selling mercenary services as well as effective weapons and training would not
> > be that much more an economic threat to a mercenary company than one that selling just weapons
> > and training when anyone can get good recruits. For ARM's licensees, fab technology is not
> > a distinguishing factor ("anyone can get good recruits"). If ARM's design offerings become
> > "good enough" (and complete enough), ARM effectively becomes an indirect competitor.
>
>
> But ARM doesn't sell a complete SoC, they sell a CPU and a GPU. Modern SoCs have so much more than that,
> and you cannot be successful with just those elements. That's like your hypothetical arms dealer selling
> only AK47s and cartridges, while your mercenary companies can not only supply well trained soldiers but
> everything from land mines to rocket launchers to helicopters armed with depleted uranium rounds.

First, I did include "complete enough". Second, if ARM can license design components to produce a server/personal computer processor (which is the hardware competition of concern in this thread, I think), ARM could probably acquire the right to sub-license such design components and optimized hardenings of them, which could then be provided to a company making server/personal computer processors. ARM seems to want to become a one-stop shop for design components for a substantial portion of the semiconductor market. ARM also seems to want to make using ARM design components as easy as possible with low time-to-market and low risk (Processor Optimization Packs). While it is a significant extrapolation to go from these tendencies to ARM providing "Chip Optimization Packs", it does not seem more unreasonable than the technical issues with ARM producing a processor chip for sale.

The economic impact to companies making ARM server/personal computer processor chips of ARM providing a ChOP for such a chip would not be that different than ARM developing such and using the ChOP to produce its own chips for sale as well as licensing the ChOP to others.

I doubt ARM will be selling hardware any time soon (it already has enough concerns even with the recent influx of capital), but if it did I tend to agree with Michael S that "most of their customers either wouldn't object ... or object silently with no visible effects". It seems the options are RISC-V, an internal ISA, or ARM. RISC-V is still immature (it may dominate the "microcontroller" market before ARM has a substantial server presence, but I suspect it will be a while before it is as broadly used as ARM is now), and RISC-V is a threat to ARM regardless of how much ARM competes in server/personal computer hardware. Apple might adopt an internal ISA, but the other ARM customers seem to recognize a benefit from a shared software ecosystem (even though as a rising tide it raises all boats, i.e., helps competitors).

If ARM customers continue to fail to provide good developer systems, ARM might be pushed into selling hardware. (At least that seems to be the theory behind the suggestion.) I am skeptical that ARM would develop a good personal computer/entry-level server processor chip and motherboard reference designs (that would probably be enough for multiple companies to make and sell systems), but ARM has announced plans for higher performance cores and better "uncore" designs.