Arm is offering deferred licence fees for startups with under $5 million in funding and offering free access to Arm IP and support to firms in the Silicon Catalyst incubator.

The new scheme, called Flexible Access for Startups is an extension of the Flexible Access offer last year which, for an annual fee of S75,000 and up, offered a delayed payment scheme allowing companies to defer payment until after they had designed their chip when they would pay for whatever IP they used plus a royalty on each chip sold.

The new scheme is pretty much the same but without the up-front annual payment. It offers no-cost access to Arm’s IP portfolio, tools, training and full support for early-experimentation, design and prototype silicon for companies with under $5 million in funding. Companies still have to pay retrospectively for any IP they’ve used plus royalties.

The most advanced CPU core on offer is a 2012-vintage Cortex-A53, and the most advanced GPU core is a 2018-vintage Mali-G52.

Under the scheme, Silicon Catalyst members can access Arm IP, EDA tools and prototype silicon for free.