Former iPhone Leader Joins Arm to Bring More Chips Into Your Life

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Fadell's push to use the Arm family of chips in the iPod and iPhone cemented Arm's position on the ground floor of the smartphone business. Arm processors are now penetrating the personal computer market thanks to Apple's M1 and M2 processors and data centers with chip designs like Amazon's Graviton.

[...] He joins Arm during a crucial time. The company hopes its processor designs will fuel a dramatic increase in the number and importance of digital devices in our lives. That'll show in devices like autonomous vehicles, smartwatches and security video cameras and in online services like the digital assistants built into smart speakers.

Fadell picked Arm chips for the iPod digital music players but had to push harder to use them in the iPhone since former Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs had favored Intel chips, Fadell said. After Apple, Fadell again picked Arm designs for thermostat maker Nest, a smart home product company he founded that Google later acquired.

[...] Arm designs are successful in phones, but the company is expanding aggressively to personal computers, servers, smart homes, internet-of-things devices and cars.

That expansion has done well so far, but Intel promises more competitive next-gen server and PC products, and a new RISC-V chip technology movement is exerting new pressure on Arm's position in smaller devices. At the same time, many new processing jobs like autonomous vehicles rely on artificial intelligence technology, and Arm's AIi accelerators are a weak point in its technology suite.

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