Larry Tesler, Jamie Urquhart, Mike Muller, Tudor Brown, Lee Smith, John Biggs, Harry Oldham, Dave Howard, Pete Harrod, Harry Meekings, Al Thomas, Andy Merritt, David Seal[2]
Arm Ltd. (stylized as arm) is a British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England .[8] Its primary business is in the design of ARMprocessors (CPUs), although it also designs other chips; software development tools under the DS-5, RealView and Keil brands; and systems and platforms, system-on-a-chip (SoC) infrastructure and software. As a "holding" company, it also holds shares of other companies. It is considered to be market dominant for processors in mobile phones (smartphones or otherwise), tablet computers and for chips in smart TVs and in total over 160 billion chips have been made for various devices based on designs from Arm (more than from any other company). The company is one of the best-known "Silicon Fen" companies.[9] Since 2016, it has been owned by conglomerate SoftBank Group.
While ARM CPUs first appeared in the Acorn Archimedes, a desktop computer, today's systems include mostly embedded systems, including all types of phones. Systems, like iPhone and Android smartphones, frequently include many chips, from many different providers, that include one or more licensed Arm cores, in addition to those in the main Arm-based processor. Arm's core designs are also used in chips that support all the most common network-related technologies.
Arm's main CPU competitors in servers include IBM, Intel and AMD.[11] Intel competed with Arm-based chips in mobile, but Arm no longer has any competition in that space (however, vendors of actual Arm-based chips compete within that space). Arm's main GPU competitors include mobile GPUs from American and Japanese technology companies Imagination Technologies (PowerVR), Qualcomm (Adreno), and increasingly Nvidia and Intel. Despite competing within GPUs, Qualcomm and Nvidia have combined their GPUs with Arm-licensed CPUs.
Arm had a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It also had a secondary listing on NASDAQ. However Japanese telecommunications company SoftBank Group made an agreed offer for Arm on 18 July 2016, subject to approval by Arm's shareholders, valuing the company at £24.3 billion.[12] The transaction was completed on 5 September 2016.[13][14]
On 13 September 2020, it was announced that Nvidia would buy Arm from SoftBank for $40 billion, subject to regulatory approval, with the latter acquiring a 10% share in Nvidia.[15][16][17]
The acronym ARM was first used in 1983 and originally stood for "Acorn RISC Machine". Acorn Computers' first RISC processor was used in the original Acorn Archimedes and was one of the first RISC processors used in small computers. However, when the company was incorporated in 1990, what 'ARM' stood for changed to "Advanced RISC Machines", in light of the company's name "Advanced RISC Machines Ltd." – and according to an interview with Steve Furber the name change was also at the behest of Apple, which did not wish to have the name of a former competitor – namely Acorn – in the name of the company. At the time of the IPO in 1998, the company name was changed to "ARM Holdings",[18] often just called ARM like the processors.
On 1 August 2017, the styling and logo were changed. The logo is now all lowercase ('arm') and other uses of the name are in sentence case ('Arm') except where the whole sentence is upper case, so, for instance, it became 'Arm Holdings',[19] and since only Arm Ltd.
Founding
The company was founded in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd and structured as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple, and VLSI Technology. Acorn provided 12 employees, VLSI provided tools, Apple provided $3 million investment.[20][21]Larry Tesler, Apple VP was a key person and the first CEO at the joint venture.[22][23] The new company intended to further the development of the Acorn RISC Machine processor, which was originally used in the Acorn Archimedes and had been selected by Apple for its Newton project. Its first profitable year was 1993. The company's Silicon Valley and Tokyo offices were opened in 1994. ARM invested in Palmchip Corporation in 1997 to provide system on chip platforms and to enter into the disk drive market.[24][25] In 1998, the company changed its name from Advanced RISC Machines Ltd to ARM Ltd.[26] The company was first listed on the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ in 1998[27] and by February 1999, Apple's shareholding had fallen to 14.8%.[28]
Micrologic Solutions, a software consulting company based in Cambridge[30]
2000
Allant Software, a developer of debugging software[31]
Infinite Designs, a design company based in Sheffield[32]
EuroMIPS a smart card design house in Sophia Antipolis, France[33]
2001
The engineering team of Noral Micrologics, a debug hardware and software company based in Blackburn, England[34]
2003
Adelante Technologies of Belgium, creating its OptimoDE data engines business, a form of lightweight DSP engine[35]
2004
Axys Design Automation, a developer of ESL design tools[36] and Artisan Components, a designer of physical IP (intellectual property: standard cell libraries, memory compilers, PHYs etc.), the building blocks of integrated circuits[37]
2005
KEIL Software, a leading developer of software development tools for the microcontroller (MCU) market, including 8051 and C16x platforms.[38] ARM also acquired the engineering team of PowerEscape.
Cadence's PANTA family of high-resolution display processor and scaling coprocessor IP cores[44] (formerly developed in Evatronix)
2014
PolarSSL, a software library implementing the SSL and TLS protocols.[45] (In February 2015, PolarSSL has been rebranded to mbed TLS to better show its fit inside the mbed ecosystem.[46])
Duolog Technologies, an electronic design automation company that developed a suite of tools that automate the process of IP configuration and IP integration[47]
2015
Sansa Security, a provider of hardware security intellectual property (IP) and software for advanced system-on-chip components deployed in Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile devices[48]
Wicentric, a Bluetooth Smart stack and profile provider[49]
Sunrise Micro Devices, a provider of sub-one volt Bluetooth radio intellectual property (IP)[49]
Apical, a provider of imaging and embedded computer vision IP products[53]
Allinea Software, a leading provider of software tools for HPC[54]
2018
Treasure Data ($600 million acquisition), provides enterprise data management software for device-to-data IoT platform[55]
Stream Technologies, provides connectivity management platform and GSM connectivity[56]
2020
In July 2020, Arm announced plans to spin off Treasure Data, together with the other parts of its "IoT Services Group" business, into separate SoftBank-owned entities by the end of September 2020.[57]
Changes of ownership
Japanese telecommunications company SoftBank Group made an agreed offer for ARM on 18 July 2016, subject to approval by ARM's shareholders, valuing the company at £23.4 billion (US$32 billion).[12][58] The transaction was completed on 5 September 2016.[13][4]
In 2017, a 25 percent stake of Arm was transferred to the SoftBank Vision Fund, which received investment from the Saudi sovereign fund.[59]
American technology company Nvidia announced plans on 13 September 2020 to acquire ARM from SoftBank, pending regulatory approval, for a value of US$40 billion in stock and cash, which would be the largest semiconductor acquisition to date. SoftBank Group will acquire slightly less than a 10% stake in Nvidia, and ARM will maintain its headquarters in Cambridge.[60][16][17][15][61] There is opposition to the deal, for several reasons, including national security concerns from the UK and competition concerns from fellow tech companies such as Google, Microsoft and Qualcomm, whose chips in use or on sale heavily rely on Arm's intellectual property.[62][63][64][65][66] It is also being battled by Arm China, its subsidiary,[67] of which majority stake is held by the Chinese funds.[68][69] The acquisition, initially scheduled to conclude before the end of 2022 per the contract, is likely to be extended beyond the initial planned period due to extended talks with regulators over the purchase.[70]
Row over ownership of Arm China
Softbank Group sold more than half of Arm China in 2018 to a local consortium consisting of various parties including China Investment Corp. and the Silk Road Fund, effectively relinquishing the majority ownership of the Chinese subsidiary to a group of investors who have ties to Beijing. Since 2020, discord between Arm and the effective owners of Arm China became visible after the British parent company unsuccessfully tried to oust the chief executive of the subsidiary, who still kept his position regardless.[71][72] A prevailing view emerged that the matter would negatively affect the pending approval by the Chinese regulators over the Softbank-Nvidia deal.[73]
As of September 2021, despite Arm's denial, some reports observed that the chief executive the British parent had tried to dismiss publicly declared the "independence" of Arm China.[67][74]
Operations
Business model
Unlike most traditional microprocessor suppliers, such as Intel, Freescale (the former semiconductor division of Motorola, now NXP Semiconductors) and Renesas (a former joint venture between Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric), ARM only creates and licenses its technology as intellectual property (IP),[75] rather than manufacturing and selling its own physical CPUs, GPUs, SoCs or microcontrollers. This model is similar to those of fellow British design houses ARC International and Imagination Technologies, which have similarly been designing and licensing GPUs, CPUs, and SoCs, along with supplying tooling and various design and support services to their licensees.
Facilities
The company has offices and design centres across the world, including Cambridge, Bangor, Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester, Sheffield, Warwick in United Kingdom; San Jose, Austin, Texas , Chandler, Mountain View, San Diego, Waltham, Richardson and Bellevue in the United States; Vancouver in Canada; Bangalore and Noida in India; Copenhagen in Denmark; Oulu in Finland; Sophia Antipolis in France; Grasbrunn in Germany; Budapest in Hungary; Galway in Ireland; Ra'anana in Israel; Trondheim in Norway; Katowice in Poland; Sentjernej in Slovenia; Cape Town in South Africa; Lund in Sweden; Yokohama, Tokyo in Japan; Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, in China; Hsinchu, Taipei in Taiwan; Seoul in South Korea.[76]
An ARM processor in a Hewlett-Packard PSC-1315 printer, produced for HP by STMicroelectronics.
Technology
A characteristic feature of Arm processors is their low electric power consumption, which makes them particularly suitable for use in portable devices.[77] In fact, almost all modern mobile phones and personal digital assistants contain ARM CPUs, making them the most widely used 32-bit microprocessor family in the world. As of 2005, Arm processors accounted for over 75% of all 32-bit embedded CPUs.[78]
The world's fastest supercomputer, the Japanese Fugaku, based on Arm AArch64 architecture[84] and codesigned by Fujitsu (their extensions are now included in the Arm architecture), was in June 2020 "2.8 times as fast as IBM's Summit, the nearest competitor. Fugaku also attained top spots in other rankings that test computers on different workloads, including Graph 500, HPL-AI, and HPCG. No previous supercomputer has ever led all four rankings at once."[85] This is the first Arm-based computer to take the top TOP500 spot. (As of November 2020), after an upgrade, it widened the lead to 3 times as fast. Fujitsu has several Arm-based supercomputers high-ranking in supercomputer benchmarks;[86] in total 4 computers on the TOP500 list (plus some non-Arm based), and two of those make top-10 on Green500.
The supercomputer maker Cray has added "ARM Option" (i.e. CPU blade option, using Cavium ThunderX2) to their XC50 supercomputers, and Cray claims that ARM is "a third processor architecture for building next-generation supercomputers", for e.g. the US Department of Energy.[87]
Fujitsu (the supercomputer maker of June 2011 world's fastest K computer according to TOP500) announced at the International Supercomputing Conference in June 2016 that its future exascale supercomputer will feature processors of its own design that implement the ARMv8 architecture, rather than the SPARC processors used in earlier supercomputers. These processors will also implement extensions to the ARMv8 architecture equivalent to HPC-ACE2 that Fujitsu is developing with ARM Holdings.[88] The Fujitsu supercomputer post-K planned,[89] will use 512-bit scalable vector extension (ARMv8-A SVE) with "the goal of beginning full operations around 2021. [..] With post-K, Fujitsu and RIKEN aim to create the world's highest-performing supercomputer"; SVE is a new extension for ARMv8 allowing "implementation choices for vector lengths that scale from 128 to 2048 bits."[90] Fujitsu has started production of this 52-core A64FX processor to replace the supercomputer, and each chip is about 2.5 times faster than their SPARC chips, "with double-precision floating-point performance of 2.7TFLOPS".[91][92] A prototype supercomputer using the chip is on the TOP500 list as of November 2019, and is the most energy-efficient one on the list.[93][94]
The Cray XC50-series supercomputer for the University of Bristol is called Isambard, named after Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The supercomputer is expected to feature around 160 nodes, each with two 32-core ThunderX2 processors running at 2.1 GHz. Peak theoretical performance of the 10,240 cores and 40,960 threads is 172 teraFLOPS.[95]
The Vanguard project by Sandia National Laboratories is to deliver an exascale ARM machine. The first generation was called Hammer, it was based on X-Gene by Applied Micro. The second generation was called Sullivan was based Cavium's ThunderXs processors. The third generation of the Sandia National Laboratories' Vanguard project called Mayer was based on pre-production ThunderX2 and consisted of 47 nodes. The fourth generation also based on ThunderX2 is called Astra and was slated to become operational by November 2018. Each Astra node will feature two 28-core ThunderX2 processors running at 2.0 GHz with 128 GB DDR4. Each rack has 18x Hewlett Packard Enterprise Apollo 70 chassis with 72 compute nodes along with 3 InfiniBand switches. Astra will feature a total of 36 racks. Thus Astra will have 5,184 ThunderX2 processors, 145,152 ThunderX2 cores and 580,608 threads. Astra's peak theoretical performance is 4.644 PFLOPS in single-precision, and 2.322 PFLOPS in double-precision and will support 324 TB DDR4.[96] Astra is the first ARM-based petascale supercomputer to enter the TOP500 list. (As of June 2019), it is ranked at 156 after an upgrade (it started out ranked at 204 in November 2018).[97]
Neuromorphic technology
ARM968E-S was used to build the neuromorphic supercomputer, SpiNNaker (Spiking Neural Network Architecture).
Licensees
Arm offers several microprocessor core designs that have been "publicly licensed" 830 times including 249 times for its newer "application processors" (non-microcontroller) used in such applications as smartphones and tablets.[98] Three of those companies[99] are known to have a licence for one of Arm's 64-bitCortex-A72 (some including ARM's other 64-bit core the Cortex-A53) and four have a licence to their most powerful 32-bit core, the Cortex-A15.
Cores for 32-bit architectures include Cortex-A32, Cortex-A15, Cortex-A12, Cortex-A17, Cortex-A9, Cortex-A8, Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A5, and older "Classic ARM Processors", as well as variant architectures for microcontrollers that include these cores: Cortex-R7, Cortex R5, Cortex-R4, Cortex-M35P, Cortex-M33, Cortex-M23Cortex-M7, Cortex-M4, Cortex-M3, Cortex-M1, Cortex-M0+, and Cortex-M0 for licensing.
Companies often license these designs from Arm to manufacture and integrate into their own System on chip (SoC) with other components such as GPUs (sometimes Arm's Mali) or modem/radio basebands (for mobile phones). Arm offers multiple licensing programs for their cores.[102] Arm also offers Artisan POP IP, where Arm partners with foundries to provide physical implementation, which allows faster time to market.
In February 2016, Arm announced the Built on Arm Cortex Technology licence often shortened to Built on Cortex (BoC) licence. This licence allows companies to partner with Arm and make modifications to Arm Cortex designs. These design modifications will not be shared with other companies. These semi-custom core designs also have brand freedom, for example Kryo 280.[103]
In addition to licences for their core designs and BoC licence, Arm offers an "architectural licence" for their instruction set architectures, allowing the licensees to design their own cores that implement one of those instruction sets. An Arm architectural licence is more costly than a regular Arm core licence,[104] and also requires the necessary engineering power to design a CPU based on the instruction set.
CPU microarchitectures designed independently from Arm include:
Qualcomm's Scorpion, Krait and Kryo used in their Snapdragon series and Falkor used in their Centriq series.[105][106][107]
Apple has had an architecture licence since March 2008,[108] after having selected Arm architecture for their first iPhone. The first Arm-based chip of Apple design was the A4, launched in April 2010, and the most recent one is the A15, launched in September 2021. All iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches use Apple designed Arm chips, and on 22 June 2020, Apple announced that they will also migrate their laptop and desktop PCs from Intel's x86-64 to their own Arm-based chips over the next two years.[109]
On 16 July 2019, Arm announced Arm Flexible Access. Arm Flexible Access provides unlimited access to included Arm intellectual property (IP) for development. Per product licence fees are required once customers reaches foundry tapeout or prototyping.[156][157]
75% of Arm's most recent IP over the last two years are included in Arm Flexible Access. As of October 2019:
Physical IP: Artisan PIK for Cortex-M33 TSMC 22ULL including memory compilers, logic libraries, GPIOs and documentation
Tools & Materials: Socrates IP ToolingArm Design Studio, Virtual System Models
Support: Standard Arm Technical support, Arm online training, maintenance updates, credits towards onsite training and design reviews
Arm Neoverse infrastructure
In October 2018, Arm rebranded their infrastructure portfolio under the Arm Neoverse brand and launched the Arm ServerReady certification program. The program is based on the Server Base System Architecture (SBSA) and Server Boot Base Requirements (SBBR) standards. Neoverse aims to scale from servers, WANrouters, gateways, cellular base stations and top-of-rackswitches. Neoverse Platforms include Cosmos, Ares and in the future Zeus and Poseidon.[158] The Cosmos Platform includes the Cortex-A72, Cortex-A73 and Cortex-A75. The Ares Platform includes the Neoverse N1 and Neoverse E1.[159]
Arm-based CPU market share in 2010: over 95% in smartphone market; 10% in mobile computers; 35% in digital TVs and set-top boxes; however, Arm did not have any market share in servers and desktop PCs.[160](As of 2019), Amazon Web Services is renting access to servers using their custom Arm-based chips[161][162][163] (and 32-core desktop PCs are available[164][165][166][167][168]). The first mobile phone to use an Arm processor was 1997's Nokia 6110 mobile phone.
In the fourth quarter of 2010, 1.8 billion chips based on an Arm design were manufactured.[169] By 2014, over 50 billion chips with Arm cores inside had been produced, 10 billion of which were produced in 2013.[170]
In May 2012, Dell announced the Copper platform, a server based on Marvell's Arm powered devices.[171] In October 2012, Arm announced the first set of early licensees of the 64-bit-capable Cortex-A57 processor.[114]
Arm's goal was to have, by 2015, ARM-based processors in more than half of all tablets, mini-notebooks and other mobile PCs sold.[172]
With Microsoft's ARM-based Windows 8 OS, market research firm IHS predicted that, in 2015, 23% of all the PCs in the world will use ARM processors.[173] This guess by IHS has since been proven wrong and desktop Windows for ARM didn't arrive until 2018.[174](As of February 2020), over 160 billion chips with ARM IP have been shipped worldwide.[175]
In 2015, Arm's Mali line of graphics processing units (GPU) were used in over 70% of digital TVs and in over 50% of Android tablets by market share;[195] some versions of Samsung's smartphones and smartwatches (Samsung Galaxy Gear) use Mali in addition to laptops. It is the third most popular GPU in mobile devices.[196]
Systems, including iPhone smartphones, frequently include many chips, from many different providers, that include one or more licensed Arm cores, in addition to those in the main Arm-based processor.[197] Arm's core designs are also used in chips that support many common network-related technologies in smartphones: Bluetooth, WiFi and broadband,[198] in addition to corresponding equipment such as Bluetooth headsets,[199] 802.11ac routers,[200] and network providers' cellular LTE.[201]
Partnerships
University of Michigan
In 2011, Arm renewed a five-year, US$5 million research partnership with University of Michigan, which extended their existing research partnership to 2015. This partnership would focus on ultra-low energy and sustainable computing.[202][203]
In October 2017, Arduino announced its partnership with ARM. The announcement said, in part, "ARM recognized independence as a core value of Arduino ... without any lock-in with the ARM architecture." Arduino intends to continue to work with all technology vendors and architectures.[205]
Intel
In October 2018, ARM Holdings partnered with Intel in order to share code for embedded systems through the Yocto Project.[206]
On 8 October 2019, Arm announced the Autonomous Vehicle Computing Consortium (AVCC) to collaborate and accelerate development of self-driving cars.[209] Members include Arm, Toyota, Continental, Denso, Bosch, NXP, General Motors and Nvidia.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
In August 2020, Arm signed a three-year agreement with DARPA, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, enabling DARPA researchers to use all of Arm's commercially available technology.[210]
Senior management
Warren East was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Arm Holdings in October 2001. In the 2011 financial year, East received a total compensation of £1,187,500 from ARM, comprising a salary of £475,000 and a bonus of £712,500.[211][212] East said in March 2013 that he would retire from Arm in May, with president Simon Segars taking over as CEO.[213][214] In March 2014, former Rexam chairman Stuart Chambers succeeded John Buchanan as chairman. Chambers, a non-executive director of Tesco and former chief executive of Nippon Sheet Glass Group, had previously worked at Mars and Royal Dutch Shell.[215]
↑ 87.087.1"Cray Adds ARM Option to XC50 Supercomputer | TOP500 Supercomputer Sites" (in en). https://www.top500.org/news/cray-adds-arm-option-to-xc50-supercomputer/. "Cray claims its ARM compiler demonstrated better performance in two-thirds of 135 benchmarks, and much better performance – 20 percent or more – in one-third of them, compared to open source ARM compilers from LLVM and GNU. The Cray ThunderX2 blades can be mixed with other XC50 blades outfitted with Intel Xeon-SP or Xeon Phi processors and NVIDIA Tesla GPUs. Both air-cooled and liquid-cooled options are available. Cray already has one customer lined up for the ThunderX2-powered XC50: the Great Western 4 (GW4) Alliance, a research consortium of four UK universities (Bristol, Bath, Cardiff and Exeter). In January 2017, the alliance announced it had contracted Cray to build "Isambard," a 10,000-core ARM-based supercomputer, which will provide a Tier 2 HPC service. The UK’s Met Office was also involved on the deal, since it was interested in seeing how its weather and climate codes would run on such a machine. The system will be paid for out of a £3 million award from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). It’s scheduled to be fully deployed by the end of this year."
↑Bhargava, Akansha; Ochawar, R.S. (2014). "Biometric Access Control Implementation Using 32 bit Arm Cortex Processor". 2014 International Conference on Electronic Systems, Signal Processing and Computing Technologies. pp. 40–46. doi:10.1109/ICESC.2014.98. ISBN978-1-4799-2102-7.