The open source movement now dominates software, but could it also become the norm in chips? Operating systems like Unix, which could be licensed for many computers, squeezed out single-vendor platforms, but then gave way in turn to fully open source OSs like Linux. Similarly, processor architectures which could be licensed by many chipmakers rose on the back of mass market products which needed a new cost structure – hence ARM’s leadership in handsets, or MIPS’ strength in home gateways and set-top boxes. However, it has been tough for those licensable cores to penetrate the high performance worlds where Intel and a host of specialized architectures still hold sway. That has driven ARM, in particular, to focus intense efforts on…