Is ARM’s monopoly dominance of cow stomach computing about to end?

CES 2014: Well Cow Boluses show the breadth of ARM’s ownership of this embedded market

ARM logoWell Cow’s Bolus shown at CES demonstrated ARM’s monopoly dominance of the cow stomach compute market. Rumors of impending FTC actions over the British IP house’s marketshare are increasingly frequent and given the importance of the lucrative cow stomach computing market, something is sure to be done.

As seen by the Well Cow Bolus that ARM was displaying at CES, ARM is in 100% of the cow stomach compute devices. In this case the SoC inside is the beefy M0 based NXP LPC11U24 MCU, a good fit for the price/performance needs of this segment. SemiAccurate has not herd of any other embedded device for this market that uses another ISA. It is not just an ARM monopoly, they are riding herd over the competition.

Well Cow's bolus for cow stomach computing

Well Cow’s bolus contains an ARM ISA SoC

If you watch the video at the Well Cow site, you can see how the bolus is inserted in the animal, basically you take a long pole with the computer on the end and shove it down the cow’s throat. Think about this long and hard before you take a summer internship at ARM with vague job descriptions that include “field work”. Competitors eying the market are curiously quick to use the insertion procedure as a market metaphor.

With the worldwide importance for this market gaining prominence across the financial sector, the rumors of FTC action to break ARM’s lock on this market are becoming increasingly frequent. Competitors will drop rumors about ARM’s forced bundling of their technology into cow stomachs to milk unfair monopoly profits.

When asked for a quote about the rumored FTC action, an Intel spokesperson refused to comment on rumors. They did however reiterate that their silicon is not in any current shipping cow stomach compute product at the moment and this wasn’t because of disinterest on their part. Intel went on to say that the only sensible fit for computing in a cow’s stomach is the x86 ISA.

Not only that but a single Xeon has more than enough power to meet the compute needs of all four stomachs, ARM needs one SoC per stomach increasing management costs significantly. Insiders at Intel promise a demo that will “change your outlook on big cores and cow stomachs” during this summer’s Dubuque IDF conference and county fair. “They will be talking about it from the opening tractor pull and keynote to the closing hog calling, trust me there.” he went on to say.

For their part, ARM did not comment on the market situation or potential competition, they only pointed out the suitability of their cores for advanced cow stomach computing. No comment was given on potential FTC action but insiders say that they won the bovine compute market on pure merit, other accusations are simply bull. They also point to a homogenized ISA between the M0 core in the NXP LPC11U24 and the Android devices that monitor the results as a synergistic value for farmers but deny this is used to exclude Intel.

In the end we will just have to wait and see. Well Cow’s boluses are on the market, available now, and exclusively uses ARM based SoCs. Will the government take action to break this possible monopoly? Will Intel force their way into this market based on superior performance or will their failure be a bitter pill to swallow? This one cud go either way.S|A

Note: Yes it is a real product. Yes ARM was showing it at CES. Yes you can buy one if you want. Yes they have some poor sod shove it down the cow’s throat on a pole. Yes ARM seems to have 100% of the cow stomach compute market. No we don’t think Intel is really interested in it, even with four stomachs per cow it is hardly as lucrative as the Google datacenter. Also we didn’t bother contacting Intel or ARM about this story, nor the FTC. ARM did talk to us about it at CES though so that part is actually true. And no, there are no rumors of FTC action over ARM’s very real monopoly of the cow stomach computing market, they probably don’t give a rat’s ass about it and not just because rats are a different breed entirely. This is a humorous story about a very real product. For the three of you out there that don’t think such things are a laughing matter, deep breaths people, have a glass of warm milk and go to bed. Moo.

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Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate