Tony Fadell, former Apple VP who is known as “the father of the iPod,” doesn’t seem to have plans to retire anytime soon. After creating his own company and then selling it to Google, Fadell is now joining the board of directors of semiconductor company Arm, which is responsible for the widely used CPU architecture ARM.
Tony Fadell now works with semiconductor company Arm
As reported by CNET, Tony Fadell joined Arm’s board of directors on Thursday to help the company improve the design of its processors as Arm expands its technology to many more devices than just smartphones.
But Tony Fadell’s history with Arm goes back a long way before this new role. In the past, he was responsible for pushing the use of ARM chips in the iPod, and consequently the iPhone. The ARM architecture has proven to be so efficient that it is now used for computer chips such as Apple’s M1 and M2.
The biggest reason Fadell liked Arm designs over alternatives is its focus on low power consumption. Performance couldn’t come at the cost of bad battery life. With power now a major constraint on PCs and servers too, Arm’s low-power focus is even more important, Fadell said.
The executive told the report that he expects to “bring a more system level mentality” to Arm as he thinks “about the end consumer.” Fadell was invited to work with Arm by the company’s CEO Rene Haas, who introduced Fadell as the new member of the board of directors during the Web Summit 2022 in Lisbon – a conference that also welcomed two Apple executives as speakers.
Arm’s importance to Apple and other companies
There are not many details about what exactly Tony Fadell will do at Arm, but the announcement comes at a crucial time for the company. In 2020, Apple announced that it would transition Mac computers from Intel processors to its own ARM-based chips. ARM chips are also widely used by smartphones and tablets, not only Apple’s.
Also in 2020, Nvidia announced its plans to acquire Arm for more than $40 billion. However, the company backed out of the acquisition earlier this year. Now Arm plans an initial public offering. The partnership between Arm and Apple is now more important than ever, as the Cupertino-based company is about to complete the transition of all Macs to Apple Silicon chips.
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