UK-based chip designer Arm said on Friday that the board of its Chinese joint venture had replaced the unit’s chief executive.
A spokesperson for the SoftBank-owned firm said Arm China’s board had voted unanimously to appoint Liu Renchen and Eric Chen as Arm China’s co-CEOs.
The spokesperson added that Liu had been registered with and accepted by the Shenzhen government as Arm China’s legal representative and general manager.
Arm has since 2020 been involved in a stand-off with Allen Wu, the chief executive of its Chinese division, Arm China.
Wu has refused to step down amid allegations of breaches of conduct. Arm China and Allen Wu did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Internet of Things
On Monday, Arm unveiled its latest micro controller design and two new systems to help reduce development time of so-called “internet of things” of connected devices.
The Cortex-M85 micro controller will help improve artificial intelligence operations such as voice recognition on devices including ‘smart’ home products and drones, said Mohamed Awad, vice president of internet of things and embedded at Arm.
The M85 is 20% faster than the previous M55 chip for machine learning applications, the company said.
The new products come as SoftBank looks to publicly list Arm after Nvidia’s deal to buy it collapsed following regulatory objections.
Qualcomm chief executive Cristiano Amon said that the US tech company is open to participating in an initial public offering by Arm.
Arm supplies the underlying blueprints for chips that chipmakers such as Qualcomm or electronics makers can tweak and take to foundries to manufacture physical chips.
Arm is increasingly providing blueprints not just for single chips but sets of chips, or systems, that can work together, said Awad.
- Reuters, with additional editing by George Russell
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