Adobe is considering buying ARM license for chips

Adobe is examining whether it makes sense to develop chips that are optimized for its products. The consideration is to purchase an ARM license, with which the company could design chips with or without a hardware partner.

Adobe’s tech chief Abhay Parasnis asked whether his company should purchase an ARM license at a conference attended by Axiom. “I don’t have the answer, but we need to pay attention to this,” said the CTO.

To follow-up questions, he replied that an ARM license allows Adobe to bring its technology closer to silicon, in other words, to develop chip-level optimizations for Adobe technology. Parasnis also stated that this is possible without his company making the chips itself, but for example collaborating with a chip company.

He did not clarify what exactly the chips should be used for. However, he stated that Adobe should look beyond PCs and smartphones and also focus on systems for voice assistants and VR and AR. In addition, Adobe will focus more on artificial intelligence, where self-designed chips can also play a role. Adobe has its own Sensei neural network platform and is working on several image processing algorithms.