If you’ve ever looked at a spec sheet for a mobile phone or laptop, or if you’re familiar with how Apple ditched Intel to make its own processors for Mac products, you’ve likely come across the word “Arm” at least once. But it’s not a term associated with just one brand; Apple, Qualcomm, Samsung, and hundreds of other companies make processors using Arm technology. With Arm processors found in almost every smartphone, along with many tablets and laptops, chances are you currently own or own at least one Arm-powered device. But what does this mean? Here’s what you need to know about its history.
ARM: The company behind ARM, an instruction set architecture that anyone can use for a price
Arm can refer to the company’s Arm or ARM, Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), which defines the basic instructions that the processor comes with, what type of program can be run locally (as in, without using emulation), and has profound implications for performance and efficiency potential. To differentiate between the two, Arm stands for Company and ARM stands for ISA. Arm is a subsidiary of the SoftBank Group, a Japanese conglomerate that also owns large parts of Alibaba, Uber, and Slack, to name a few. In the 1980s, Arm developed the ARM hardware.
For much of the history of processors, companies have made their own ISAs and chips based on ISA (such as Intel with x86 and IBM with Power ISA), but Arm offers ISA and some standard core designs for companies that want to make processors. Arm makes money by licensing its technology to other companies, who are also allowed to customize the ARM architecture, but only up to a point. When a company makes its own custom ARM chip, the ISA cannot be purposefully changed, both to avoid compatibility issues across different chips and possibly also to protect Arm’s bottom line as the chip designer.
Arm’s business model allowed many companies to license and use processor technology that would have been very difficult to build from scratch. The smartphone market has always been a stronghold of ARM, but ARM processors can also be found in any industry that is not particularly centralized, which is a greater challenge for the success of ARM processors. Even very old and centralized markets such as PCs and PC servers are seeing increased use of ARM processors, which are mainly taking x86 market share.
A brief history of Arm and ARM
Source: Apple
Originally designed by Acorn Computers in 1985, ARM originally stood for “Acorn RISC Machine”. It wasn’t long before Apple became interested in ARM, and in 1990 Acorn Computers spun off the processor design team as Advanced RISC Machines (reinventing the ARM acronym), which was later renamed simply Arm Holdings. The work between Arm and Apple eventually evolved into the ARM6, which was used in Apple’s Newton PDA, which was not very successful and thus led to the temporary end of Apple’s use of ARM chips.
Arm quickly established itself as a company for mobile devices like the Newton, but also with phones like the legendary Nokia 3310 from 2000 (known as the Nokia Brick) and Apple’s iPod Touch from 2007. In 2005, Arm’s market share in mobile phones was 98%This was before the modern smartphone was introduced. today, 99% of smartphones use ARM processorsand although that is also divided among different companies such as Samsung, Apple, and Qualcomm, it is the same for Arm, which makes money from licensing fees.
Arm’s business model allowed many companies to license and use processor technology that would have been very difficult to build from scratch.
Arm has also had inroads in markets traditionally dominated by Intel and AMD’s x86, especially servers and PCs. Server chips such as Amazon’s Graviton and Ampere’s Altra lead the charge primarily in the data center, while Apple, Qualcomm and Samsung are x86’s primary competitors in the PC market. As of mid-2023, Arm’s market share in servers and PCs is approximately 7% and 14%, respectively. In addition, Arm has also seen some success in game consoles, such as the Nintendo DS or even the Nintendo Switch, which uses Nvidia’s ARM-based Tegra X1.
However, not everything went as planned for Arm. After acquiring Arm in 2016, SoftBank Group attempted to sell it to Nvidia in 2020, but the deal fell through in 2022 because Nvidia competes with several companies that make ARM chips. In addition, Arm is locked in a legal battle with Qualcomm over the 2021 purchase of Nuvia, a startup that built ARM chips. Qualcomm is seeking to make ARM CPUs using Nuvia designs, which Arm says requires Qualcomm to obtain a new license. Now, Arm is demanding that Qualcomm dispose of Nuvia’s intellectual property, while Qualcomm presses ahead with plans to release Nuvia chips.
Arm’s future as a new competitor approaches
Source: Siemens
For many years, Arm has been the undisputed master of mobile phones and a serious competitor in markets traditionally dominated by x86. Unlike Intel and AMD, Arm hasn’t had any major setbacks in several years, but a storm is looming on the horizon, and that storm is called RISC-V. In many ways, Arm and RISC-V are very similar, but also very different and very fierce competitors, though RISC-V is much younger and less well-established (similar to the dynamic between Intel and AMD a few years ago).
RISC-V International is the company that develops RISC-V ISA, just like how Arm develops ARM ISA. While Arm only licenses its ARM architecture to companies who can pay for it and does not allow companies to modify ISAs, RISC-V is completely open source, and companies are free to do as they see fit with the technology. Although ARM is not completely closed source like x86, it is still closed source, which is one of the driving factors for the growing popularity of RISC-V. Companies such as Microsemi abandoned ARM for RISC-V due to greater flexibility and lower costs.
Arm’s argument against RISC-V is that it could fund research and development for the ARM core and that not closing the ISA could lead to something called fragmentation, which is basically the idea that too much freedom in processor design can lead to widespread incompatibilities. It is difficult to assess whether Arm is superior to RISC-V, but what is certain is that RISC-V has gained ground since its introduction in 2015, and RISC-V International has big plans for the entire computing industry in all markets.
Over time, RISC-V may be a huge speed bump for Arm, but in the short term, it’s likely that ARM will remain unchallenged in smartphones and continue to chip away at x86 supremacy in PCs and servers. Of course, companies using ARM are not a united front and are competing not only with x86 and RISC-V but also with each other. In addition, Arm’s dispute with Qualcomm is a serious problem and could undermine Arm’s business if not resolved on good terms. This could ultimately be a very difficult period for Arm.
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