ARM Holdings
Encyclopedia
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
multinational
Multinational corporation
A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...
semiconductor
Semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter...
and software
Computer software
Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....
company headquartered in Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
. Its largest business is in processors, although it also designs, licenses and sells software development tools under the RealView and KEIL
KEIL
Keil was founded in 1982 by Günter und Reinhard Keil, initially as a German GbR. In April 1985 the company was converted to Keil Elektronik GmbH to market add-on products for the development tools provided by many of the silicon vendors...
brands, systems and platforms
Platform (computing)
A computing platform includes some sort of hardware architecture and a software framework , where the combination allows software, particularly application software, to run...
, system-on-a-chip
System-on-a-chip
A system on a chip or system on chip is an integrated circuit that integrates all components of a computer or other electronic system into a single chip. It may contain digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio-frequency functions—all on a single chip substrate...
infrastructure and software. It is considered to be market dominant in the field of mobile phone chips and is arguably the best-known of the 'Silicon Fen
Silicon Fen
Silicon Fen is the name given to the region around Cambridge, England, which is home to a large cluster of high-tech businesses focusing on software, electronics, and biotechnology...
' companies.
The company was founded as Advanced RISC Machines, ARM, a joint venture between Acorn Computers
Acorn Computers
Acorn Computers Ltd. was a British computer company established in Cambridge, England, in 1978. The company produced a number of computers which were especially popular in the UK. These included the Acorn Electron, the BBC Micro, and the Acorn Archimedes...
, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and VLSI Technology
VLSI Technology
VLSI Technology, Inc was a company which designed and manufactured custom and semi-custom ICs. The company was based in Silicon Valley, with headquarters at 1109 McKay Drive in San Jose, California...
. The new company intended to further the development of the Acorn RISC Machine
ARM architecture
ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...
's RISC chip, which was originally used in the Acorn Archimedes
Acorn Archimedes
The Acorn Archimedes was Acorn Computers Ltd's first general purpose home computer to be based on their own ARM architecture.Using a RISC design with a 32-bit CPU, at its launch in June 1987, the Archimedes was stated as running at 4 MIPS, with a claim of 18 MIPS during tests.The name is commonly...
and had been selected by Apple for their Newton
Apple Newton
The MessagePad was the first series of personal digital assistant devices developed by Apple for the Newton platform in 1993. Some electronic engineering and the manufacture of Apple's MessagePad devices was done in Japan by the Sharp Corporation...
project. The design was flexible and found continued design wins over time, and is now the processing core for many custom application-specific integrated circuit
Application-specific integrated circuit
An application-specific integrated circuit is an integrated circuit customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use. For example, a chip designed solely to run a cell phone is an ASIC...
s (ASICs).
ARM Holdings' primary listing is on the London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...
and it is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index
FTSE 100 Index
The FTSE 100 Index, also called FTSE 100, FTSE, or, informally, the footsie , is a share index of the 100 most highly capitalised UK companies listed on the London Stock Exchange....
. It has a secondary listing on NASDAQ
NASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...
.
Name
The acronym ARM, first used in 1983, originally stood for "AcornAcorn Computers
Acorn Computers Ltd. was a British computer company established in Cambridge, England, in 1978. The company produced a number of computers which were especially popular in the UK. These included the Acorn Electron, the BBC Micro, and the Acorn Archimedes...
RISC Machine." However, when the company was incorporated in 1990, the acronym was changed to stand for "Advanced RISC Machines" in the company name "Advanced RISC Machines Holdings." Then, at the time of the IPO
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
in 1998, the company name was changed to "ARM Holdings".
History
The Company was founded in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd and structured as a joint venture between Acorn ComputersAcorn Computers
Acorn Computers Ltd. was a British computer company established in Cambridge, England, in 1978. The company produced a number of computers which were especially popular in the UK. These included the Acorn Electron, the BBC Micro, and the Acorn Archimedes...
, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and VLSI Technology
VLSI Technology
VLSI Technology, Inc was a company which designed and manufactured custom and semi-custom ICs. The company was based in Silicon Valley, with headquarters at 1109 McKay Drive in San Jose, California...
. Its first profitable year was 1993. The Company's Silicon Valley and Tokyo offices were opened in 1994. In 1997, ARM Holdings invested in Palmchip Corporation to provide a system on chip platforms and to enter into the disk drive market. In 1998 the Company changed its name from Advanced RISC Machines Ltd to ARM Ltd. The Company was first listed on the London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...
and NASDAQ
NASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...
in 1998.
In 1999, ARM acquired Micrologic Solutions, a software consulting company based in Cambridge. Further expansion followed in 2000 when ARM acquired Allant Software, a developer of debugging
Debugging
Debugging is a methodical process of finding and reducing the number of bugs, or defects, in a computer program or a piece of electronic hardware, thus making it behave as expected. Debugging tends to be harder when various subsystems are tightly coupled, as changes in one may cause bugs to emerge...
software; Infinite Designs, a design company based in Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...
and EuroMIPS a smart card design house in Sophia Antipolis, France. In 2001, ARM acquired the engineering team of Noral Micrologics, a debug hardware and software company based in Blackburn, UK. The Company's China office was opened in 2002. In 2003, ARM acquired Adelante Technologies of Belgium, creating its OptimoDE data engines business, a form of lightweight DSP
Digital signal processing
Digital signal processing is concerned with the representation of discrete time signals by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals. Digital signal processing and analog signal processing are subfields of signal processing...
engine.
In 2004, ARM acquired Axys Design Automation, a developer of ESL
Electronic system level
Electronic system level design and verification is an emerging electronic design methodology that focuses on the higher abstraction level concerns first and foremost. The term Electronic System Level or ESL Design was first defined by Gartner Dataquest, a EDA-industry-analysis firm, on February...
design tools; and Artisan Components, a designer of Physical IP (standard cell
Standard cell
In semiconductor design, standard cell methodology is a method of designing application-specific integrated circuits with mostly digital-logic features. Standard cell methodology is an example of design abstraction, whereby a low-level very-large-scale integration layout is encapsulated into an...
libraries, Memory Compilers, PHY
PHY
PHY is an abbreviation for the physical layer of the OSI model.An instantiation of PHY connects a link layer device to a physical medium such as an optical fiber or copper cable. A PHY device typically includes a Physical Coding Sublayer and a Physical Medium Dependent layer. The PCS encodes and...
s etc.), the building blocks of integrated circuits. Further acquisitions followed in 2005 when ARM acquired KEIL Software, a leading developer of software development tools for the microcontroller
Microcontroller
A microcontroller is a small computer on a single integrated circuit containing a processor core, memory, and programmable input/output peripherals. Program memory in the form of NOR flash or OTP ROM is also often included on chip, as well as a typically small amount of RAM...
market, including 8051
Intel 8051
The Intel MCS-51 is a Harvard architecture, single chip microcontroller series which was developed by Intel in 1980 for use in embedded systems. Intel's original versions were popular in the 1980s and early 1990s. While Intel no longer manufactures the MCS-51, binary compatible derivatives remain...
and C16x platforms. ARM also acquired the engineering team of PowerEscape. In 2006, ARM acquired Falanx (now called ARM Norway
ARM Norway
ARM Norway is a Norwegian company located in Trondheim, owned by ARM Holdings. ARM Norway develops graphics accelerators for OpenGL three-dimensional rendering, with emphasis on low electric power consumption, suitable for use in portable devices like mobile phones...
), a developer of 3D graphics accelerators
Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
, and SOISIC, who specialise in developing silicon-on-insulator
Silicon on insulator
Silicon on insulator technology refers to the use of a layered silicon-insulator-silicon substrate in place of conventional silicon substrates in semiconductor manufacturing, especially microelectronics, to reduce parasitic device capacitance and thereby improving performance...
physical IP. In 2010, ARM joined with IBM, Texas Instruments, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Freescale Semiconductor in forming a Not For Profit Open Source engineering company, Linaro. In 2011, ARM bought Obsidian Software Inc., a privately held company that creates processor verification products. In November 2011, ARM acquired Prolific, a developer of automated layout optimization software tools, and the Prolific team will join the ARM physical IP team.
Operations
The company has offices and design centres across the world, including San Jose, California, United StatesSan Jose, California
San Jose is the third-largest city in California, the tenth-largest in the U.S., and the county seat of Santa Clara County which is located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay...
; Austin, Texas, United States
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
; Olympia, Washington, United States
Olympia, Washington
Olympia is the capital city of the U.S. state of Washington and the county seat of Thurston County. It was incorporated on January 28, 1859. The population was 46,478 at the 2010 census...
; Trondheim, Norway
Trondheim
Trondheim , historically, Nidaros and Trondhjem, is a city and municipality in Sør-Trøndelag county, Norway. With a population of 173,486, it is the third most populous municipality and city in the country, although the fourth largest metropolitan area. It is the administrative centre of...
; Sophia Antipolis, France
Sophia Antipolis
Sophia Antipolis is a technology park northwest of Antibes and southwest of Nice, France. Much of the park falls within the commune of Valbonne. Created in 1970-84, it houses primarily companies in the fields of computing, electronics, pharmacology and biotechnology. Several institutions of higher...
; Munich, Germany
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
; Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
; Yokohama, Japan
Yokohama
is the capital city of Kanagawa Prefecture and the second largest city in Japan by population after Tokyo and most populous municipality of Japan. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu...
; China; India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
; and Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
.
A characteristic feature of ARM processors is their low electric power
Electric power
Electric power is the rate at which electric energy is transferred by an electric circuit. The SI unit of power is the watt.-Circuits:Electric power, like mechanical power, is represented by the letter P in electrical equations...
consumption, which makes them particularly suitable for use in portable devices. In fact, almost all modern mobile phones and personal digital assistant
Personal digital assistant
A personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...
s contain ARM CPU
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
s, making them the most widely used 32-bit microprocessor family in the world. Today ARMs account for over 75% of all 32-bit embedded CPUs.
ARM processors are used as the main CPU for most mobile phones, including those manufactured by Apple
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
, HTC
HTC
-Companies:*HTC Corporation, a Taiwanese manufacturer of handheld devices*Harrisonville Telephone Company, a telephone company in Waterloo, Illinois*Horry Telephone Cooperative, a telephone cooperative in Horry County, South Carolina...
, Nokia
Nokia
Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki...
, Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB is a joint venture established on October 1, 2001 by the Japanese consumer electronics company Sony Corporation and the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson to manufacture mobile phones....
and Samsung
Samsung
The Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea...
; many PDAs and handhelds, like the Apple
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
iPod
IPod
iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
and iPad
IPad
The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...
, Nintendo
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
Game Boy Advance
Game Boy Advance
The is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured, and marketed by Nintendo. It is the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001; in North America on June 11, 2001; in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001; and in the People's Republic of China...
and Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...
, Game Park
Game Park
Game Park is a South Korean company that was founded in 1996 and went bankrupt in March 2007. It is responsible for creating the GP32 and the never-released XGP. Gamepark Holdings was founded by former employees of Game Park in 2005.-Foundation:...
GP32
GP32
The GP32 is a handheld game console developed by the Korean company Game Park. It was released on November 23, 2001, in South Korea only.- Overview :The GP32 is based on a 133 MHz ARM CPU and 8 MB of RAM...
and GamePark Holdings
GamePark Holdings
GPH, formerly known as GamePark Holdings, is a South Korean company responsible for creating the GP2X that was founded by former employees of the game maker GamePark in 2005.-History:...
GP2X
GP2X
The GP2X is an open-source, Linux-based handheld video game console and portable media player developed by South Korean company GamePark Holdings. It was released on November 10, 2005, in South Korea only....
; as well as many other applications, including GPS navigation device
GPS navigation device
A GPS navigation device is any device that receives Global Positioning System signals for the purpose of determining the device's current location on Earth...
s, digital camera
Digital camera
A digital camera is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor. It is the main device used in the field of digital photography...
s, digital television
Digital television
Digital television is the transmission of audio and video by digital signals, in contrast to the analog signals used by analog TV...
s, network devices and storage. The WLAN processor of Sony's PlayStation Portable
PlayStation Portable
The is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004...
is an ARM9
Unlike other microprocessor corporations such as AMD, Intel, Freescale (formerly Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
) and Renesas (formerly Hitachi
Hitachi
Hitachi is a multinational corporation specializing in high-technology.Hitachi may also refer to:*Hitachi, Ibaraki, Japan*Hitachi province, former province of Japan*Prince Hitachi and Princess Hitachi, members of the Japanese imperial family...
and Mitsubishi Electric
Mitsubishi Electric
is a multinational electronics and information technology company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the core companies of the Mitsubishi Group....
), ARM only licenses its technology as intellectual property (IP), rather than manufacturing its own CPUs. Thus, there are a few dozen companies making processors based on ARM's designs. Intel, Samsung
Samsung
The Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea...
, Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...
, Freescale, Nvidia
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
, Qualcomm
Qualcomm
Qualcomm is an American global telecommunication corporation that designs, manufactures and markets digital wireless telecommunications products and services based on its code division multiple access technology and other technologies. Headquartered in San Diego, CA, USA...
and Renesas have all licensed ARM technology. In the fourth quarter of 2010, 1.8 billion chips based on an ARM design were manufactured.
ARM Holdings' strategy is by 2015 to have ARM-based processors in more than half of all tablets, mini-notebooks and other mobile PCs sold.
Revenue & Market share
In 2010, over 6.1 billion ARM-based chips were sold, with a 55% unit increase from 2009. Here are ARM-based products' market share in different market segments 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.With Microsoft's new ARM-based OS coming in 2012, market research firm IHS predicted that in 2015 23% of all the PCs in the world will use ARM processors.
In 2011, ARM's total revenue was $192 million in the third quarter, an increase of 22% compared to the same quarter of 2010, due to 28 new chip licensing revenue. ARM extends to server markets. HP will start producing servers using ARM-based chips in 2012. Also, Calxeda introduced the first ARM-based server chip in November 2011.
Microsoft
In 2011, MicrosoftMicrosoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
demonstrated Internet Explorer 10 at the MIX11 show in Las Vegas. For around 30 seconds of the 90-minute talk, they mentioned that some of the demos were running on an ARM computer. At 2011 CES, Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
revealed that Windows 8 operating system will break the x86 shackles and run on ARM architecture platforms. During Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's presentation of Windows 8, a handful of the company's hardware partners showed off tablets and notebooks running the OS, including ARM Holdings instead of Intel and AMD.
University of Michigan
In 2011, ARM renewed a five-year, $5 million research partnership with University of MichiganUniversity of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, which extended their existing research partnership to 2015. This partnership will focus on ultra-low energy and sustainable computing
Green computing
Green computing or green IT, refers to environmentally sustainable computing or IT. In the article Harnessing Green IT: Principles and Practices, San Murugesan defines the field of green computing as "the study and practice of designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers, servers,...
.