ARM: The most famous British technology company you’ve never heard of

ARM’s chip designs are the “heart” of the iPhone and nearly every modern smartphone. It appears in almost every other area of ​​technology, from fitness trackers to servers. Such a successful company but very few people know about.

Origins of ARM

ARM was born before people even imagined smartphones. In 1990, ARM separated from Acorn Computers, a famous name of the land of fog. Founded in Cambridge in 1978, this is one of the few startups that laid the groundwork for microcomputers. The first product, Acorn System 1, was relatively typical at the time. At £80, it’s geared towards universities, and comes with a small LED screen, a keyboard and a cassette interface.

Then, Acorn released System 2, 3, 4 as well as Acorn Atom, but the turning point only really came in 1981, when they were selected by the BBC to produce a machine to accompany the TV series to enhance national level of information technology. Acorn launched the Proton computer and later renamed the BBC Micro, released in December of the same year. By 1984, about 80% of British schools owned one, and the government subsidized half of it.

Acorn looks set to be a major player in the information age. So the company began to lay the foundation for its future. They know they need hardware acceleration to match the graphical user interface. However, for a company with just 400 employees like Acorn, it’s very difficult to design chips from scratch. Acquiring another firm is not a good option.

The answer to Acorn came from a brochure that co-founder Hermann Hauser put on Chief Design Officer Stephen Furber’s desk. Mr. Furber and his colleague Sophie Wilson have found a new type of microprocessor from Berkeley’s research at the University of California, called “reduced instruction set computing” or Risc. The Berkeley Risc design is the work of two graduate students David Patterson and Carlo Sequin. In February 2015, their contribution to the history of computing was honored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

The invention of two scholars Patterson and Sequin is extremely important to Acorn researchers. Mr. Furber assessed that, even though it was designed in less than a year, it was still competitive with leading commercial products and was exceptionally simple. The computer uses a chip born from this design called Acorn Risc Machine (ARM).

The Risc chips helped Acorn explode and quickly caught the eye of Apple. In 1990, the two sides collaborated to design a new processor for the Newton computer. The company created by Apple and Acorn to shoulder the responsibility is called ARM.

The Risc design is completely in line with Newton, allowing for less power to be used, which is the premise for building smartphones. However, that unusual architecture hurt Acorn, forcing them away from the personal computer market. Meanwhile, the Wintel alliance (Mirosoft Windows and Intel) gradually dominates the market. You cannot run Windows on an Acorn ARM computer. Acorn doesn’t have enough resources to encourage developers to work directly on their platform. Technical excellence does not translate into consistent business results.

Quietly dedicate

The fortunes of Acorn and ARM also turned in different directions. Over the next decade, Acorn changed many times but still lost about £10 million a year. In 1999, after changing their name to Element 14, they were acquired by another company. All of their profits come from a 24% stake in ARM.

At the same time, ARM is growing stronger even when they are unknown to the public. Its expertise in low-power processor design helped ARM capitalize on the smartphone revolution and renewed its relationship with Apple in 2007. The first iPhone to use ARM-designed chips manufactured by Samsung. Other companies quickly followed Apple’s lead. Today, nearly every smartphone on the market uses ARM chips.

If Acorn once lost to Wintel, Wintel now lost to ARM. Windows and Intel struggled to turn the technology around to match the low power demands of mobile phones, with ARM leading the way. In 2007, Intel abandoned the Pentium line of chips to switch to Core chips, but it still took another year to launch the Atom mobile chip line.

ARM knows they’re at the forefront of engineering and makes it available to anyone. Laurence Bryant, ARM Strategic Marketing Manager, said that if you look at ARM history, they have always been focused on low power and mobility. It’s heritage and in the corporate DNA. ARM continuously enhances computing power and user experience, without sacrificing the benefits of energy consumption.

Instead of focusing only on the technical benefits of the chip, ARM emphasizes cooperation with manufacturers. Ed Gemmell, Brand Marketing Manager, reveals ARM’s two competitive advantages: low-power processing and a chip-centric ecosystem. Furthermore, they “don’t tell the other party what to do”. ARM offers the best mobile processors, and it’s up to the partner to combine components. Not all companies do as ARM, for example, Intel controls too much of their inventions on computers, leaving little room for manufacturers. “It is not a healthy environment and the road to innovation will slow down,” commented Mr. Gemmell.

ARM does not design an entire chip, but only does the highly specialized work of arranging the central processor and sending that design to a third party. The third party will add elements to make it a system on a chip (SoC). However, some companies like Apple will pay extra to tinker with it yourself.

That way of doing things makes ARM unique. Rivals can count on ARM. Both Nvidia and Intel use ARM technology despite competing with each other and with ARM itself because they know ARM will not fight them for end users. You will never buy a chip made by ARM, so Intel is pleased to partner with ARM.

ARM designs can be reused in many different situations, such as in both smartphones and routers. For that reason, in 2014, half of its income comes from designs that are five years old.

Today’s ARM-based processors are not only found in smartphones, but also in servers and smart homes. ARM’s goal is not to become a national brand, but to quietly support the operation of electronic devices that people are using every day.