[sdiy] The magic of ARM

[Phil Macphail]

ARM gained market-share by offering a fast processor that was
significantly lower-power than the alternatives at the time (early 90's).
That position may be debatable now, but the critical mass of development
tools, industry experience and a comprehensive range of architectures is
hard to ignore. No other company offers such a comprehensive range of
cores and additional IP (MMU, graphics etc.), which is why they are as
dominant as they are.
MIPS started as a CPU company when RISC was in fashion, and re-invented
themselves when that market (that is, Silicon Graphics) disappeared.
That's a hard sell for anyone, so it isn't surprising they struggled (ARM
had a 20-year head-start).

On 09/08/2013 21:08, "Lanterman, Aaron" <lanterma at ece.gatech.edu> wrote:

>
>On Aug 9, 2013, at 2:02 PM, Rainer Buchty <rainer at buchty.net>
> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 9 Aug 2013, Lanterman, Aaron wrote:
>> 
>>> This may be going to far afield, but I am curious: what is it about
>>>the ARM designs in particular that has led to that architecture
>>>becoming so completely dominant, vs., say MIPS or whatever?
>> 
>> ARM has a very interesting licensing scheme. Instead of huge
>>down-payments plus per-item royalties like the others they pretty much
>>license on a per-item base.
>
>Very interesting! So it's not that ARM is *technically superior* to MIPS,
>or AVR32, etc? They basically nailed a better business model?
>
>- Aaron
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