Arm to enter the chip making business with Meta as a confirmed customer

With MediaTek and Nvidia slated to enter the "AI PC" market later this year, Intel/AMD/Apple will finally have a new competitor. But, there is now a fifth contender who plans to throw their hat in the ring: Arm. CEO Rene Haas could unveil the chip "as early as this summer".

The mystery Arm chip will be used for data centres and servers. Arm's efforts will be bolstered by Ampere, which Softbank (Arm's parent company) plans to acquire in the coming months. So far, Ampere hasn't been able to make a dent in Intel/AMD's market share in the server space, but that could change once Arm enters the fray.

Plus, Arm has also found a major client for the above-mentioned chip. It is none other than Meta. And, it could power Sir Jony Ive's mystery device, too. This suggests Arm might be working on a lower power chip for consumer devices as well. But this could potentially result in a massive conflict of interest because just about everyone from Qualcomm, Apple and, of late, Intel uses Arm's IP.

The report says production could be outsourced to TSMC, but there's a good chance Intel will also be involved at some point because Arm said it would use Intel's 18A node for a mobile chip. If the chip actually launches this year, there's a good chance it has already taped out. There's a good chance the first iteration will be manufactured on an slightly older TSMC node like N3 or N4.