Strong ARM scoops up Sansa to boost IoT security

Chipmaker ARM has sealed a deal to buy Israeli Internet of Things (IoT) security specialist Sansa Security. Financial terms of the deal, announced Thursday, were not officially disclosed. However, the WSJ previously reported that around $75m-$85m was on the table. ARM makes the chips that power the majority of the world’s …

[Peter Gathercole]

"ARM makes the chips..."

No. How many times do we have to point this out.

ARM design the ISA and the cores for the chips, and then licenses these out to the actual chip makers.

If ARM actually made all the processors, they would be one of the biggest companies in the semiconductor manufacturing sector.

[chasil]

Qualcomm

"ARM makes the chips that power the majority of the world’s smartphones."

Qualcomm is the market leader for phone CPUs (so much so that the Chinese have initiated anti-trust action).

As I understand it, Qualcomm's 32-bit CPUs are an internal design implementing the ARM instruction set. It is known as "Krait." Qualcomm does not use ARM Cortex cores for most of their successful products.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krait_(CPU)

Qualcomm's latest CPU is 64-bit, and this CPU did use an ARM design. It has been problematic as it generates too much heat.

ARM neither makes nor designs the most successful phone chips. ARM's contribution is the instruction set for the Krait segment of the market.

[P. Lee]

IoT's problem

Doing things badly is very simple and very cheap.

Doing things properly massively increases the resource requirements, management, complexity and chance that something will go wrong. It is also expensive. All these things destroy the market.

IT security is hard, boring and expensive.

[Anonymous Coward]

"ARM scoops up Sansa"

I wondered why ARM would want to buy a maker of MP3 players. Although I do quite like my Sansa Fuze.