Arm breaks 35-year tradition with new in-house CPU

At an event on Tuesday in San Francisco, U.K.-based semiconductor and software company Arm Holdings revealed the Arm AGI CPU. This is a production-ready central processing unit (CPU)—the primary processor that directs a computer’s operations—built specifically for running inference, which is the process of running an AI model, within an AI data center. The launch represents the first in-house chip in the company’s 35-year history. It marks a transition for the firm after nearly 36 years of exclusively licensing its chip designs to partners. Arm developed the new processor using its Arm Neoverse family of CPU IP cores and through a partnership with Meta.

Meta is serving as the first customer for the Arm AGI CPU, which is designed to work harmoniously with the tech company’s training and inference accelerator. Arm, which is majority owned by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group, also counts OpenAI, Cerebras, and Cloudflare among its launch partners. According to reporting from CNBC, Arm began developing these chips back in 2023.

To explain the technical necessity of the new processor, Arm pitched the CPU as a component of data center infrastructure. While graphics processing units (GPUs) typically handle the training of AI models, CPUs manage critical tasks like scheduling workloads, managing memory and storage, and moving data across systems. Arm stated that the CPU has become the “pacing element of modern infrastructure — responsible for keeping distributed AI systems operating efficiently at scale.” The company noted that these demands require an evolution of the processor.

This transition to manufacturing its own silicon puts Arm in direct competition with many of its partners. The company, which is majority owned by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group, will now be competing alongside many of its partners as it shifts from its traditional licensing-only model. The move comes at a time when data center processors are facing supply constraints. In March, competitors Intel and AMD told their customers in China that wait times for their products would be longer due to CPU shortages, Reuters originally reported.

Why it matters

Arm is pivoting from its long-standing model of exclusively licensing chip designs to competing directly with its own partners by manufacturing its own silicon.