www.forbes.com, Feb. 26, 2023 –
Arm is the most prevalent processor architecture in the world. Odds are good that the car you drive contains multiple Arm-based processors hidden within, while the phone you carry absolutely does. According to Mercury Research, Arm-based processors accounted for 13% of all PCs sold during the fourth quarter of 2022. Where Arm is making its most significant gains, however, is in the server market, with the public cloud providers leading the way.
I recently spoke with Tab Schadt, CEO of Liftr Insights, about Arm's penetration in the public cloud market. Liftr Insights offers some of the most comprehensive tracking of instance types offered by the top public cloud providers available. Mr. Schadt told me that Arm-based offerings in the public cloud increased by an incredible 290% in 2022. In addition, arm-based instance types grew to account for over 6% of public cloud offerings at the end of 2022, up from 4.6% at the start of the year. That's significant momentum.
Arm, the Business
While Arm Holdings, Ltd controls the Arm architecture, the company doesn't actually sell any processors. Instead, Arm, the company, manages the evolution of the architecture and licenses its technology to processor vendors. There are various licensing models offered by Arm. Some vendors incorporate IP blocks from Arm into their silicon, while others implement Arm's architecture from scratch, optimizing to solve the problem.