Intels push in the handset space will spur competition

Warren East has been with ARM since 1994 and was mandated to set up their
consulting business. He was earlier VP, Business Operations, from February 1998.
In October 2000, he was appointed to the board as COO and in exactly one year
from then, he became the CEO. Prior to ARM, he was with Texas Instruments. He is
a chartered engineer, fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology,
fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and Companion of the Chartered
Management Institute. Excerpt

What is your India strategy, and what kind of work is coming out of your
India center?

The domestic market doesnt really exist yet in India for electronic
products. Also, many of the companies that we supply products to, dont have a
presence in India yet. We supply IP to semiconductor companies and they, in
turn, supply to electronic product companies.

We want our design center in India to be described as the Cambridge of Asia.
We want to have a broad capability here. We also need to work on the ecosystem
that exists in India for those companies. The second reason is that because of
the growing domestic market in terms of both consumers and electronic product
companies, we need to be in India and develop the brand. We have to do all that
and be a part of the semiconductor design community in India. ARM absolutely
needs to be a part of that.

ARM recently completed ten years. How was this long journey an integral
part of the mobile handset industry?

We have grown from being in a handful of phones to a presence in about 90%
of the worlds mobile phones. It has been an exciting journey. We are working
with handset manufacturers because it is an interesting value chain, and ARM is
probably in the right direction.

Warren East, CEO, ARM

What is the roadmap for ARM 11 and ARM Cortex?

The ARM 11 is the most recent microprocessor and is in high
volumeproduction wise. In the last reported quarter, ARM 11 accounted for 40%
of the total volume of ARMs shipped. ARM 11 is the processor in Apple iPhone.
However, we want to go beyond it, into Cortex A8 and Cortex A9. Cortex A9 is the
most recent that we launched. We supplied early deliverables to our lead
partners; semiconductor companies that work with us on the leading edge received
the beta version, Cortex A9. They will do some work before production and the
feedback from that will enable us to release production deliverables toward the
end of this year. The phones containing our product will reach the market by the
end of next year. It is going to be shipped between 2011-2012 and will deliver
eight times the performance of ARM 11.

What improvements can users expect from this processor?

What we are looking forward in the roadmap here in phones is much lower
power consumption so that users can have more functionality without any
degradation in terms of battery life, even as the infrastructure transitions
from 2G to 3G. The pipes supplying data to phones are much wider and enable a
lot better video and Internet experience. This product also offers speech
translation, which will help in translating speech in real time. Things work
fine when one can do speech translation with speech translation software and
work in real time. We can do this if we have enough performance and a
microprocessor.

Do you think battery technologies are keeping pace with new technologies
and applications?

The battery technology has not kept pace with processing technologies
despite alternatives like fuel cells. Battery life is also an issue and this is
where we see companies like ARM having an opportunity to improve. The problem is
that lithium ion batteries are not delivering the volume ratio of what people
want, they have to be charged for a long time. The application generally
precedes the ideal platform, and, in a way, they have to because they have to
get there, prove the concept, and tackle the consumer. Then we come along behind
the technology and deliver.

What is your strategy for the 32-nanometer initiative?

The project is underway. A bit of 32-nanometer development has been taking
effect in Bangalore. This (32-nm semiconductor processor) is still under
development. Our physical IP development is tied to the process development and
if the process development is going slow, our physical IP development will also
go slow. If development goes faster, then hopefully, IP development will also be
faster. It is the way of progress in the semiconductor industry to make the
geometry smaller. It comes at the cost of more complexity, and at the end of the
day, it is beneficial to the user. The road map is not different for 45- or
65-nm. We intend to have a full physical IP available with all the functions and
features demanded by our target applications available on 32-nm.

Are you satisfied with the browsing experience in the phones today?

The end user experience with browsing is not good. It is mainly because of
the applications and software in the phone and not because of the
microprocessors. Another reason for a not-so-good experience is the data on the
websites has been written with keeping a computer screen in mind and the
experience we get will be different on the phone screen and depends on the input
capacity of data and the out put capacity of information. People building
high-speed telephone network in due course will effect the browsing experience,
and the good news is people are designing websites for smaller screens and
applications written to comprehend the smaller screen.

Intel is trying to re-enter in a similar field. Do you see that as a
competitions for future, and what are the strategies?

We see Intels initiative increasing the competition. Our strategy is the
same as for any competitors in the market. We have to make sure that our
customers have more compelling experience with the ARM architecture, and that we
give everything they requirelike application support on the Internet, a
business model in which we provide our customers with much more experience in
building system on device applications and bring that experience to pay back to
us in future work.

Sudesh Prasad and Pradeesh Chandran

sudeshp@cybermedia.co.in