Arm Hires Amazon AI Chip Expert to Boost In-House Development

Arm Holdings, a prominent player in the global chip architecture sector, has reportedly hired an AI chip expert from Amazon to join its in-house chip development initiative. The expert, who previously led the development of Amazon's AI chips Trainium and Inferentia, is expected to bring valuable experience to Arm's efforts in creating its own chips.

Arm's current business model revolves around designing core architectures and instruction sets, which are then licensed to clients. Major companies like Apple and Nvidia have utilized Arm's technology to design their own chips, generating revenue for Arm through licensing fees. Arm's architecture is prevalent in nearly all smartphones globally, and its server chips have made significant inroads into the data center market, traditionally dominated by Intel and AMD.

In July, Arm announced plans to allocate a portion of its profits towards manufacturing its own chips and other components. The company's CEO, Rene Haas, publicly stated that Arm is exploring opportunities beyond its traditional design business, including the development of smaller, function-specific, and modular chips that can be combined to form complete system solutions. This strategic shift is seen as a crucial step for Arm to expand its business scope.

Arm's plans to enter the chip manufacturing sector were first outlined in a sealed court document from December last year. The company has since recruited high-level executives from competitors, including a senior manager from Hewlett Packard Enterprise with extensive experience in large-scale system design, and senior chip engineers from Intel and Qualcomm. These hires underscore Arm's commitment to enhancing its capabilities in complete chip and system design.

The addition of the AI chip expert from Amazon is seen as a significant move by Arm to strengthen its position in the AI chip market. Amazon's self-developed chips aim to provide AI computing solutions that offer better cost-performance ratios compared to Nvidia's GPUs. This expertise is expected to help Arm develop more competitive specialized chip products.