Surprise Industry Fact: ARM's Biggest Customer is Intel

By Douglas Perry
published

Who would have thought? This piece originally slipped by under our radar, but it is a noteworthy piece of information, especially since we now know at least one specific ARM chip that Intel is manufacturing ARM cores in its fabs.

In 2010, Intel was ARM's most significant resource of licensing revenue, but it has been unclear which products Intel is paying licensing fees for.

According to an article published by EETimes, about 7.0 percent of ARM's 2010 revenue - $631.3 million - came from Intel. That amounts to about $44 million in licensing fees. The source of this information is Nomura Equity Research, which, however, did not disclose where this number came from and which products it relates to. Netronome, which uses Intel as a contract foundry for its NFP-6xxx series Flow Processor, recently stated that the chips will integrated an ARMv6-based ARM11 core. Depending on the success of the chips, it is likely that Intel's payments to ARM will be increasing down the road.

According to Nomura, TSMC contributes 5.7 percent to ARM's revenue base, Samsung 5.7 percent, TI 4.6 percent, and NEC 3.5 percent. Interestingly, there is also AMD on the list (2.5 percent) - ahead of Infineon, Apple, Qualcomm, Fujitsu, and UMC.

Douglas Perry
22 Comments Comment from the forums
  • asnorton44
    ARMy of one
    Reply
  • zak_mckraken
    I don't usually complain about this, but please proof-read your articles. Sentences like " especially since we now know at least one specific ARM chip that Intel is manufacturing ARM cores in its fabs." gives me a headache.
    Reply
  • icrf
    The largest customer is only 7% of revenue? That sounds like a nicely diversified client base.

    Did I miss it, or is there no link to the source? Googling shows it to be six months old and is really a better write-up on the topic: http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4234459/ARM-customers
    Reply
  • Zingam_Duo
    Unsurprising, I knew it. It is a well known fact that deep inside every modern x86 CPU is a RISC CPU. So I bet these are many tiny little ARM cores that make these Intel Core processors :D
    Reply
  • classzero
    Intel is ARMing themselves for war!
    Reply
  • webdev511
    Intel has licensed ARM tech for a long time. Remember the Intel StrongARM processor? I'm not surprised they still have an agreement in place either. Coop-a-tition is pretty much the norm these days.
    Reply
  • eddieroolz
    Interesting. I didn't know Intel licensed ARM big time.
    Reply
  • rantoc
    I'm sure Intels is crying for indirectly pay that when they had a revenue at $43.6 billion!
    Reply
  • joeman99
    They're paying ARM a leg.
    Reply
  • goodguy713
    im betting its related to some form of technology patent being used in the processors.. unless were talking amd making arm related products along win intel .. apple has the A5 but if i remember correctly they bought out an arm related company a while back..
    Reply