SoftBank Explores Sale or IPO for Chip Designer Arm Holdings
wsj.com
wsj.com
Similarly, how does TSMC set their prices? There don't seem to be any real alternatives for Apple or AMD to switch it, it seems like they could really squeeze them if they wanted to.
Depending on licensing type and Cores. Charge as Percentage of selling price or Per Core. But generally the price of ARM license is sort of like a rounding error in grand scheme of things. ARM's total revenue is less than Intel's Profit.
>They occupy such a strangely powerful position in the global chip landscape.
There are ARM architecture license, which effectively allows a company to use specific ARM arch indefinitely for a large upfront cost. ( Apple, Qualcomm etc. )
Anandtech has a few articles on the subject if you are interested.
>how does TSMC set their prices?
Depending on your node, and are priced at Per wafer or per fully functional chip. Again the Wafer Price isn't that expensive. For example it cost Apple less than $25 to produce their A13.
>There don't seem to be any real alternatives for Apple or AMD to switch it,
This actually has little to do with pricing of the Wafer. The Design of your chip isn't transferable to another Foundry without a lot of work. And the design part is EXTREMELY expensive.
>it seems like they could really squeeze them if they wanted to.
Or risk your customers going to Samsung and not coming back for a long time due to lead time in semiconductor's design. Along with empty Fab capacity which they will have to lower price to fill. A lose - lose situation.
SemiWiki and SemiEngineering has a few articles on the subject if you are interested.
> The only rival that had the now-retired founder looking over his shoulder was Samsung. In 2016, Samsung lost orders for a new iPhone and TSMC ended up as the dominant Apple supplier. The South Korean company then resorted to sharp price-cutting, taking advantage of its excess capacity to help Samsung win new customers, including Qualcomm. Some insiders at TSMC suggested they follow suit. However, Chang brushed aside the advice. In the end, TSMC came out unscarred, at least on the surface. This is because it was able to profit from a sharp increase in demand from emerging companies, including Bitmain Technology Holding -- a major Chinese supplier of equipment for cryptocurrencies -- and Huawei. U.S. customers, including Qualcomm and Nvidia, continued to place the majority of their orders with TSMC. Hence, Samsung failed to break TSMC's grip on the industry.
They have a perpetual license to do whatever they want, from back in the Newton days.
Even buying arm to stop other people from using the architecture wouldn't benefit them; They could already make their version proprietary if they wanted to, but choose not not.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2020-06-24/money-... (Control-F “Who controls a company?”)
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/softbank-arm-fired-china-ceo-...