Lauren Goode: Since you became CEO, people say that there's been a big culture change. Do you agree with that assessment?<\/strong><\/p>\n Rene Haas:<\/strong> The thing that I've learned\u2014I knew this intrinsically when I worked for Jensen, but I certainly internalized it when I took over here\u2014is that the CEO sets the tone for the company.<\/p>\n My training, which ultimately develops who you are as a leader, was really accelerated by moving to Silicon Valley 30 years ago, working with a few startups and then working for Nvidia. And the common theme between all those companies is that I was working for founders. At the time I couldn't tell you, "Oh, working with founders, that's the kind of environment that I resonate with." But looking back, that\u2019s where I think my DNA was shaped and where I found the environment I thrive in.<\/p>\n What kind of environment is that exactly? Taking risks, bold growth, fast markets, making mistakes, but at the same time, being willing to take big bets. So when I took over here, I said, that\u2019s the kind of culture I want.<\/p>\n Was this Arm silicon project already in the works when you became CEO?<\/strong><\/p>\n No.<\/p>\n How much of this was your idea, and how much of it was Masa\u2019s?<\/strong><\/p>\n Was it his decision? No. I\u2019m the CEO. Was he very aware and involved in the trade-offs and various things we looked at? Hundred percent. But this was more from a brainstorming perspective, as a partner of ideas, as opposed to your boss telling you, \u201cYes to this, no to this.\u201d He\u2019s not into that level of detail.<\/p>\n One of the benefits from SoftBank\u2019s 90 percent ownership of ARM is that he's our chairman, and he's our biggest shareholder, and as a result of that he\u2019s someone I talk to all the time. We're pretty close.<\/p>\n One analyst told me you talk to Masa 10 to 12 times per day.<\/strong><\/p>\n Some days. He does like to talk on the phone. I am up all hours. He knows my personal schedule very well. He knows when I get up, he knows my workout schedule. He knows when I go to sleep. He's pretty good about all that.<\/p>\n What made you think this is the time for Arm to do this chip?<\/strong><\/p>\n So somewhere along the way, we morphed from an IP company into a compute platform company. And by that, I mean, when you think about the role the CPU plays in any ecosystem, there's such an interdependency between the hardware of the CPU and the software ecosystem, whether it's running Windows or macOS or iOS or Android or Linux. I don't think we acknowledged it or I don't think we understood its importance, but when I took over, I definitely knew that this was who we were and it was something that we had to advance.<\/p>\n So why would we build a chip? When you\u2019re a compute platform company, there are times when the ecosystem benefits from you physically building something. We've seen this in the past, whether it's Microsoft building a Surface laptop that helps the Windows ecosystem, while HP and Dell and Lenovo are still building laptops; or whether it\u2019s Google building a Pixel phone, but meanwhile, Samsung still builds Android phones.<\/p>\n Those products are still a sliver of their businesses.<\/strong><\/p>\n But it benefits the ecosystem. If you think about Gemini on a Pixel platform, if Gemini is optimized on Android, it helps Samsung. If you think about Microsoft developing tools or applications for Surface that benefit Windows, it will benefit HP, Lenovo, and Dell.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the thing that I think people haven't always understood about us. They say, "Oh, it's an IP company." But the IP that we deliver is a compute platform, and ultimately platform companies need to do things to move the ecosystem forward.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the new chip called?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s the Arm AGI CPU.<\/p>\n AGI as in, artificial general intelligence?<\/strong><\/p>\n That's right. You like it?<\/p>\n I don\u2019t dislike it. I wonder if AGI is a term that's going to go out of fashion at some point, as the industry collates around some other ideas of super intelligence.<\/strong><\/p>\n I'm betting it won't.<\/p>\n Who's your target customer for this?<\/strong><\/p>\n The first customer is going to be Meta. But we also have SK Hynix, Cisco, SAP, Cloudflare. We have multiple customers.<\/p>\n And this is a chip designed for data centers.<\/strong><\/p>\n Data centers.<\/p>\n What makes this chip special?<\/strong><\/p>\n There's a number of things, but one is that it's unbelievably power-efficient. This company was born from building chips to run off of batteries or in mobile phones. So we have this mindset around efficiency. And everything that you hear about the growth of AI is how much energy is needed. So anything you can do to deliver the world's most power-efficient server CPU is all goodness. This is going to be the most power-efficient CPU.<\/p>\n The other thing that it\u2019s going to be incredibly good at is running agentic AI. One of the myths out there has been that with the rise of AI, the GPU or the accelerator is everything. But when you look at how agents run inside the data center, that's work that only the CPU can do. The GPU doesn't go away, but it needs far more CPUs to run all the agents.<\/p>\n Meta just struck two pretty big deals with Nvidia and AMD, for both CPUs and GPUs. This includes Nvidia\u2019s new Vera CPUs, which are part of the bigger Vera Rubin superchip.<\/strong><\/p>\n That's right. Which is Arm.<\/p>\n Pardon my French, but does launching your own CPU piss off a customer like Nvidia?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, so, back to the platform discussion \u2026 It raises all boats.<\/p>\n That is a very convenient answer.<\/strong><\/p>\n But it's not inaccurate. The more software that's written for Arm, the more optimizations that are done for Arm\u2014all of that helps anybody that builds on Arm. The opportunity is massive. When you look at the amount of dollars associated with the data center and AI growth, it's just really large. To your question, does it piss off Nvidia? I'd imagine it will piss off Intel and AMD more than it pisses off Nvidia.<\/p>\n Why is that?<\/strong><\/p>\n Because it takes market share from them.<\/p>\n You\u2019re referring to the fact that it\u2019s Intel\u2019s x86 architecture versus Arm architecture. So you don't think you\u2019ll piss off your pal, Jensen, but that AMD and Intel may have some response to this.<\/strong><\/p>\n I use \u201cpiss off\u201d as tongue-in-cheek. It's beneficial to the Arm ecosystem and it's beneficial to Jensen that we build a chip. If you've got [Nvidia\u2019s] Vera chip, which is a great product, and you've got Arm AGI CPU, which is a great product, it's not great for Intel and AMD, that's all I know.<\/p>\n Will Nvidia actually buy your CPU? Amazon execs appeared in a video at your event, vouching for your chip\u2014will Amazon, which already has its own chips, buy yours?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019d love it if Jensen bought some, but the Vera CPU is already very closely coupled to his own chip, and they have their own networking technology to connect all their chips. And Amazon will probably continue to use their own Graviton chip.<\/p>\n But we didn\u2019t build this for Amazon, we built it because we think the market for Arm CPUs is really huge. It\u2019s basically an underserved market. If you look at some of the early customers we have, like Meta, which is going to be using our chip in an air-cooled rack\u2014they don\u2019t need Nvidia\u2019s NV Link. Or Cloudflare\u2014they can\u2019t buy Amazon\u2019s Graviton chip, and they don\u2019t have the wherewithal to build their own.<\/p>\n Who is fabricating your chip? Co-packaging? Networking?<\/strong><\/p>\n TSMC. All TSMC. We\u2019re also building a reference design of a server. Not \u201cwe,\u201d but, we're working with partners like Super Micro and Foxconn. In today's day and age doing a chip by itself isn't enough. So we worked with partners in the ecosystem to deliver a full solution in terms of a server rack.<\/p>\n You are now going to have to answer questions about volume and yield and gross margins.<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes. When I joined Arm from Nvidia in 2013, I remember coming here and thinking, "Wow, there's no scrap, there\u2019s no yield, there\u2019s no RMAs, there\u2019s no forecast. You just hit Send and the royalty report comes in. What a wonderful business.\u201d<\/p>\n So there\u2019s a part of me that says, \u201cAm I crazy for getting back into this?\u201d But yes, all of that is stuff we\u2019ll now have to manage, but I know how to do that. I know what\u2019s required, and we\u2019ve been building a team inside the company from an operations and go-to-market standpoint, everything that\u2019s necessary to support that flow.<\/p>\n How many employees have you dedicated to this?<\/strong><\/p>\n We've added about 2,000 engineers into a group that does backend design, implementation, and subsystem work. They're not all on this chip, but we leverage a lot of the work that we do with our compute subsystems into this kind of work. I don't know if I want to put a number and say it's a 500-person or a 700-person project. It leverages a lot of work that we've already done.<\/p>\n A lot of folks in the industry say that when you first launch a chip, it can take two to three generations before it has the impact that you're hoping it has. Do you agree with that?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah. So, since I've become the CEO, we\u2019ve been building what we call these compute subsystems. They essentially build all the building blocks of the compute engine that we can hand to customers for them to build their systems-on-chips. In some cases, it's 85 percent of the work [already done for them]. It's a huge amount of work.<\/p>\n The compute subsystem that the Arm AGI CPU is built on has already been shipped in silicon by other partners. So the confidence level that we have that this chip is going to work is extremely high. To your point, yes, it can take a certain number of iterations. That's a bit more if you're getting into a brand-new market and you're trying to build something that's never been built before. It's never been tested. You don't really know how the market's going to accept it.<\/p>\n This one, our confidence level that the first one out of the chute is going to be very, very good and be a volume candidate is very, very high.<\/p>\n Lord, give me the confidence of a chip CEO. OK. I'm going to do a little rapid-fire with you. I'm going to say a few words to you and I just want your quick response. Intel.<\/strong><\/p>\n Historic.<\/p>\n RISC-V.<\/strong><\/p>\n Nascent.<\/p>\n Still nascent? Started in 2014.<\/strong><\/p>\n Just giving you one word. Nascent.<\/p>\n I don't know if you happened to read the WIRED article that my colleague wrote last year about the history of RISC and the founding of RISC-V?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes.<\/p>\n And how some people in that community\u2014I won't use the word, but they weren't very nice about Arm.<\/strong><\/p>\n What did they say?<\/p>\n They said you guys were assholes.<\/strong><\/p>\n Him or me? [he gestures at his chief of staff, Saumil Shah.<\/em>] We could say such things about them.<\/p>\n Back to rapid-fire: Sam Altman.<\/strong><\/p>\n Brilliant.<\/p>\n What makes you think he's brilliant?<\/strong><\/p>\n I know him. He is a long, long-game type of guy. He really thinks quite big. He's quite visionary in terms of how he thinks about problems, how he thinks about technology. Yeah, I think he's brilliant.<\/p>\n When you look at politics, geopolitics, the macroeconomic climate, and also the memory shortage\u2014it's a crazy time to be launching a chip. How much has that changed your plans as you get ready to put this chip out into the world?<\/strong><\/p>\n None. Because this is a long journey for us. The Arm AGI CPU is the first product. This is just the beginning.<\/p>\n My first job out of college was with Texas Instruments in 1984. It was a boom year for the semiconductor industry. But [the early 1980s] were one of the worst recessions ever. Then in 1985 Reagan took office for the second term, and he cut defense spending, which was a big part of TI's business.<\/p>\n What was the lesson I learned about that? It's never a good time to do anything. Seriously. There's never a good time to do anything. There's never a bad time to do anything. You\u2019ve just got to do it.<\/p>\n I read that you\u2019re a big fan of the famed basketball coach Phil Jackson. Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n What I love about Phil Jackson is that he took two great teams that had a lot of talent and turned them into champions. Michael Jordan was not a champion before\u2014<\/p>\n Michael Jordan was a stand-out at North Carolina.<\/strong><\/p>\n He won the title when he was at North Carolina, but he wasn't the best player on the team. And Kobe Bryant was not a champion before Phil Jackson. He turned them into champions.<\/p>\n Have you met Phil Jackson?<\/strong><\/p>\n No, I have not.<\/p>\n How has this not happened?<\/strong><\/p>\n [nodding toward his chief of staff<\/em>] Someone doesn't know how to do his job.<\/p>\n What irritates you as a leader? Please don\u2019t say \u201cstupid questions.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n People happy with the status quo.<\/p>\n What's an example of that?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWe've always done it this way. Not sure we could do any better. Can't see any other way to improve this.\u201d<\/p>\n The antithesis of risk. What inspires you as a leader?<\/strong><\/p>\n Making a big difference. Doing things that change the world.<\/p>\n Everyone says that in Silicon Valley. What does that actually mean?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, what does it actually mean? Well, if I distill it down to Arm, what inspires me is what we're doing with this chip. It's a big, big change for the company.<\/p>\n Is this a bet-the-farm moment?<\/strong><\/p>\n No.<\/p>\n So even if this chip doesn't work, you're still confident in your IP business?<\/strong><\/p>\n Absolutely. And the chip's going to work. It works.<\/p>\n Let us know what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor at<\/em> [email protected].<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story Rene Haas is half-prone on a couch in his office in San Jose, California. A basketball rests in his hand, partly obscuring his face. Haas had grimaced when WIRED\u2019s photographer first asked him to assume this position. The headlines came to him immediately: \u201cPeople are going to say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48509,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-48507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Rene](\"https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/69c2f4052a4fd03c4ad63307\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/GettyImages-2267713978.jpg\"\/)
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