Microsoft gets ARM’d

Seemingly the only major consumer tech company to not embrace ARM processors has been Microsoft. That was until now….

The new license greatly extends the technologies Microsoft can make use of from Arm Holdings. The companies have collaborated for years on software and devices mainly in mobile, consumer and embedded products.

“We have licensed our architecture and our instruction set to Microsoft,” said Ian Drew, executive vice president of marketing at Arm. “This type of license allows you to design your own microarchitecture.”

Only a select group of companies hold similar licenses to design their own Arm-based microarchitectures, including mobile phone chip giant Qualcomm, as well as Marvell Technology and Infineon Technologies. (Computerworld)

With ARM licensed CPU’s at the heart so many portable and consumer devices, licensing the technology could be necessary for survival if you’re Microsoft. If the company expects to compete in devices and OS, it needs ARM. With Microsoft’s deep pockets, the possibilities of how it might use customized CPU’s are endless. This can’t be good news for Intel.