How Arm conquered the chip market without making a single chip, with CEO Rene Haas

Decoder with Nilay Patel

One of the more interesting quirks of the modern tech world is that there’s a really important company at the center of it all that doesn’t make anything. But its work is in your phone, in your TV, your car and maybe even your laptop. I’m talking about ARM, a chip design company that’s been through quite a lot these past few years, and I'm talking to Arm CEO Rene Haas.

Arm designs the instruction sets for modern chips: Qualcomm’s chips are Arm chips. Apple’s chips are Arm chips. Samsung’s chips are Arm chips. It’s the heart of modern computing. Arm licenses the instruction set to those companies, who then go off and actually make chips with all sorts of customizations. Basically every smartphone runs an Arm processor, Apple’s Macs now run arm processors, and everything from cars to coffee machines are showing up with more and more arm processors in them.

We want to know what you think about Decoder. Take our listener survey!

Transcript:

https://www.theverge.com/e/23137412

Links:

The Vergecast: The HDMI Holiday Spec-tacular on Apple Podcasts

Biden signs $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act

Intel needs 7,000 workers to build its $20 billion chip plant in Ohio - The Verge

What comes after the smartphone, with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon - The Verge

Why the global chip shortage is making it so hard to buy a PS5

Nvidia’s huge Arm deal has just been scrapped

What is a SoC?

What is an ECU?

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Sr Audio Director is Andrew Marino. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters. And our Executive Producer is Eleanor Donovan.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices