ARM co-founder to retire

ARM announced on Thursday that president and co-founder Tudor Brown will retire from the company in May 2012.

According to a Thursday report by Market Watch, the U.K.-based chip design company said Brown, who has been with the company for 21 years, will not seek reelection to the board at its annual shareholder meeting on May 3, 2012, and will leave the company that same day. There are no plans at this stage to replace Brown, a company spokesman added.

The co-founder has worked in various roles including engineering director and CTO, and executive vice president of global development and chief operating officer. He joined the board in 2001 and became president in 2008 "with responsibility for developing high-level relationships with industry partners and governmental agencies and for regional development in Asia-Pacific", said ARM.

ARM chairman Doug Dunn said in the statement that Brown has "played an important role in the creation and successful development of ARM over the past 21 years and has made an immense contribution in a wide range of positions".

The company reported that it has shipped more than 15 billion chips based on ARM technology since it was founded in 1990. It added that its net profit for the third quarter has more than doubled due to demand for smartphones and tablets.

ARM has extended the reach of its design from mobile devices to servers. Last month, Hewlett-Packard confirmed its plans to include chips based on ARM in its servers which could reduce energy consumption by 89 percent, but the tech giant added that it will also use Intel-based Atom chips in future iterations of its servers.