Recently, according to the British "Financial Times" report, Japan's Softbank has agreed to spend 23,400 million pounds (about 31 billion US dollars) to buy British chip design company ARM. According to the "Wall Street Journal", ARM has officially accepted the offer of 24.3 billion pounds (about 32.2 billion U.S. dollars) from Japan's Softbank. Once the ARM board and the British government agree, then it will be possible for Japan's Softbank to successfully acquire ARM.
Contact A few days ago, Japan’s Softbank sold out Alibaba’s shares so that it was investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. What is the secret of selling Ali shares and making decisions to buy ARM? Why did ARM get the favor of Japan Softbank? Will ARM sell itself?
ARM's predecessor was Acorn. In 1990, Acorn officially reorganized into an ARM company. In 2014, China's ARM chip shipments reached 1 billion, global ARM chip shipments were as high as 12 billion, and about 95% of tablets and smartphones use ARM processors. At the same time that ARM is in full swing, more and more IC design companies have chosen to join the ARM camp. Among them, AMD, Broadcom and other heavyweight IC design companies and National Defense University are among the oldest design units.
ARM's product line is very long, from the system IP, physical IP, GPU, video decoding, display and other products. The most widely known is the Cortex family of ARM processors. Among them, Cortex-A is for open systems; Cortex-R is for embedded systems; Cortex-M is for various microcontrollers; and SC series is for security markets such as payment, e-government, and SIM cards. These products became the cornerstone of ARM and Intel's resistance.
Among ARM's recent products, Cortex A53 and Cortex A72 are among the star products.
Compared to the Cortex A57 with strong performance and large power consumption, the Cortex A53 can be described as a middle ground. Under the 28nm process HPM process, the Cortex A53 of the 1.5G motherboard not only meets the daily use of mobile phones, but also controls power consumption. About 500mW or so, the balance between performance and power consumption is better. Therefore, in order to avoid Cortex A57's “fever†at 28nm on the occasion of the TSMC 16nm process bounce, the 8-core Cortex A53's SOC has become popular.
The Cortex A72 is the strongest micro-architecture in current ARM commercial products, although it cannot be compared with Intel's Haswell and IBM's Power8. But for mobile phones, the Cortex A72 is already over-capacity.
Although the ARM's market value is only 22 billion US dollars, but this is far from the true value of ARM, especially in some cases, the ARM company's patent can even become a weapon of the big power game - once ARM tightens the Chinese ARM camp IC The designing company’s technology licenses, such as Huawei Hass, Spreadtrum, ZTE Microelectronics and other IC design companies, will inevitably be hit hard. The chip business of domestic ARM camp IC design companies will be difficult to sustain. In fact, in the incident of the US sanctions on ZTE some time ago, ARM was also pulled by the U.S. government to become a member of the sanctions ZTE...
| ARM's business model and its advantagesARM Company has mastered the expansion of ARM instruction set, micro-architecture design and compiler development, but does not directly sell CPU or SOC. It only authorizes the IC design unit and company's instruction set authorization and micro-architecture in AA system. Companies such as Qualcomm, Apple, Huawei, Samsung, and National University of Defense Science and Technology have purchased ARM instruction set licenses and can design their own microstructures; MediaTek, Spreadtrum, Lianxin, Quanzhi, Rockchip, Actions, and other IC design companies Obtained is a soft core or hard core authorization, through the purchase of the CPU core and GPU core, as well as a variety of interface IP core, through a certain process, integrated SOC. For an IC design company that has purchased an instruction set authorization, it only needs to pay an authorization fee, while a company that purchases an IP core license, in addition to the license fee, pays a patent fee for each chip produced, and the patent fee is considerable. For example, Samsung paid patent fees of 340 million U.S. dollars to ARM in 2012. Samsung expects that patent fees will reach 900 million U.S. dollars by 2020.
In addition, although ARM allows the sale of instruction set authorization, it is strictly forbidden to modify or extend the ARM instruction set. This way, it firmly holds the right to formulate standards and avoids the fragmentation that may be caused by the free expansion of various companies' instructions. problem.
ARM's business model on the one hand avoids the embarrassment of being incompetent, and it also enables IC design companies that do not have technical system building capabilities or micro-architectural design capabilities to sell IC design companies through licensing and IP licensing. Participating in industry competition has on the one hand reinforced the ARM camp, more players mean stronger industrial alliances, and greater market share - more people walk, and it becomes a road, guided by the herd phenomenon. More and more software and hardware companies have joined the ARM camp.
On the other hand, companies that buy ARM hard core or soft core licenses can get a share of the market that they can't get into with their own technical level. IC design companies that join the ARM camp can rely on ARM's platform and technology system to make quick money.
It is also thanks to this business model that ARM has been able to thrive and flourish and has even been able to pose a threat to chip giant Intel.
Although ARM has accepted the offer of Japan's Softbank, there is still a certain distance from the last successful acquisition - if the British government does not approve, or if ARM shareholders do not agree, the purchase will certainly not end. In addition, with reference to the many acquisition cases of Violet in the international arena, even if it is signed, there is no guarantee that the acquisition can really be implemented, half-way abandoned, or the possibility of half-way killing a process to bite gold still exists.
I believe that the probability of ARM being acquired by Japan Softbank is actually not high. The main reasons are as follows:
First, Japan's Softbank has not enough price tag.
As stated before, this acquisition was made under the background of the appreciation of the Japanese yen and the depreciation of the British pound. The acquisition of the so-called 43% premium of the so-called premium of Japan’s Softbank in the context of the exchange rate changes has actually resulted in the acquisition of a premium. Less than its declared level. Moreover, the actual value of ARM is higher than its market value. The price code of Japan's Softbank's acquisition may not be able to make ARM's shareholders tempted. In fact, both Apple Inc. and China Ziguang Group have the financial resources to outperform Japan's SoftBank.
Second, ARM's financial status is good, and it is in a dominant position in the field of embedded chips.
Selling a chicken that produces a golden egg every year sells for 23 golden eggs. It must be said that many people think that the seller has done a losing business. ARM's situation is similar. In the financial situation is good, and there is no competitor in the embedded chip field, ARM has no sense of urgency and necessity to sell itself. Even if you want to sell yourself, you can wait and see. , the price is higher than the three and then choose the highest bidder.
Finally, even if the ARM board and the UK government agree that Japan’s Softbank’s acquisition of ARM will be more similar to commercial investment, ARM will continue to maintain its existing management system, and its business model and technology line will not be clamped by Japan’s Softbank. Softbank only obtains ownership of all or part of the shares of dividends and ARM.
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