ARM might be in the midst of a buyout but that isn't slowing down its usual work. This week, Arm announced a new three-year partnership agreement with DARPA, a contract that will see agency gain access to the chip maker's technology for research. 

DARPA, otherwise known as the U.S Defence Advanced Projects Agency, hopes to build on its on-going research by utilising Arm's IP, tools and support. A monetary value for the contract hasn't been announced, but DARPA will have access to all commercially available Arm technologies. The IP license also gives the agency “a portal to the world's largest open compute ecosystem of silicon designers and software developers, enabling the lowest SoC build costs and smallest risk profile”.

Rene Haas, president, IP Products Group, Arm, gave the following statement in a press release: “The span of DARPA research activity opens up a huge range of opportunities for future technological innovation. Our expanded DARPA partnership will provide them with access to the broadest range of Arm technology to develop compute solutions supported by the world’s largest ecosystem of tools, services and software.”

Currently, there are more than 170 billion Arm-based chips spread across the world, all built using a dense portfolio of the industry's “most proven” IP.

KitGuru Says: This announcement will likely get lost amid all the rumours of Arm's imminent sale and re-acquisition. At the moment, the rumour mill is still pointing towards Nvidia becoming the new parent company for Arm, but we'll have to see if any other developments take place in the weeks to come. 

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