ARM powers ahead

CHIP DESIGN boutique - ARM Holdings - announced a record bookings quarter yesterday. The number of ARM powered chips shipped - 555 million - increased by 50 per cent compared to the same period last year.

A 16 per cent increase in revenues and 25 increase in earnings per share for Q1-Q2 2006 partly reflected the results of ARM's acquisition of Falanx Microsystems, a 3D graphics IP company.

ARM signed 21 processor and 24 physical IP licenses in Q2 2006. These included seven licenses for tARM11 products; four licenses for the company's new Cortex products, and five physical IP platform licenses for nodes from 65nm to 0.18 micron.

ARM's new CEO - Warren East, commented, "We are encouraged by the licensing activity we have seen in Q2 which generated a record bookings quarter for the group. Strong licensing of our newest processors and physical IP has helped to generate sequential increases of more than 15 per cent in license revenues and more than 10 per cent in the group's order backlog. µ