Arm Flexible Access one year later: Accelerating innovation for more than 60 partners and counting

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By Dipti Vachani, senior vice president and general manager, Automotive and IoT Line of Business at Arm

arm.com, Aug. 24, 2020 – News highlights:

• More than 60 partners have signed up for Arm Flexible Access in its first year
• New Arm customers make up more than half of these first-year partners
• Silicon design opportunities expanded and accelerated in areas such as IoT, ML and automotive, with 15% of program partners already moving towards tape out

One of the great things about working at Arm is being part of a team of people passionate about delivering the foundational technology for billions of devices each year, from sensors to smartphones to supercomputers. The convergence of 5G, IoT, and AI is driving multiple industries to transform at the same time. We see this transformation in retail, automotive, factories, homes, and our cities. So when I joined Arm a little over 18 months ago, one of the first questions we looked to tackle was simply, "how do we make Arm the easiest company to innovate with?"

No matter the size of the business or sector, to deliver innovative new technologies, our partners need the fastest, lowest-cost and minimum-risk journey to SoC design. This was the thinking when we launched Arm Flexible Access last summer; to provide both new and existing partners with access to more than 75% of Arm's IP portfolio, support, tools and training, but with no up-front licensing commitment.

One year later, Flexible Access is now Arm's fastest-growing program ever with more than 60 partners signing up for the freedom to experiment, evaluate, design and customize their own unique SoCs. The program is empowering existing partners and more than 30 first-time Arm IP customers to address growth opportunities in IoT, machine learning, autonomous systems and automotive. Flexible Access provides these first-time customers with a portal to the largest ecosystem of tools, services and software.

When we speak to Flexible Access users, the feedback is overwhelmingly positive and already we're seeing some great early success stories. These include ASIC houses such as Faraday and Socionext, established semiconductor companies such as Nordic Semiconductor, startups including Atmosic and Hailo, and even government bodies such as the Korean Ministry of SMEs and Startups, which has invested in the program to support startups in the region. OEMs which previously used third-party design houses to create the full design of their chips, are now able to develop their SoCs in a far more collaborative way with direct access to all of the IP they need.

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