Arm Holdings
Arm Holdings plc (formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England, whose primary business is the design of central processing unit (CPU) cores that implement the ARM architecture family of instruction sets. It also designs other chips, provides software development tools under the DS-5, RealView and Keil brands, and provides systems and platforms, system-on-a-chip (SoC) infrastructure and software. As a "holding" company, it also holds shares of other companies. Since 2016, it has been majority owned by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group.
Company type
27 November 1990[1]
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]
Cambridge, England, UK
Microprocessor designs, graphics processing unit (GPU) designs and neural processing unit (NPU) designs[3]
US$2.68 billion (2023)
US$671 million (2023)
US$524 million (2023)
US$6.87 billion (2023)
US$4.05 billion (2023)
5,963 (2023)[4]
SoftBank Group (90%)[5]
While ARM CPUs first appeared in the Acorn Archimedes, a desktop computer, today's systems include mostly embedded systems, including ARM CPUs used in virtually all modern smartphones. Processors based on designs licensed from Arm, or designed by licensees of one of the ARM instruction set architectures, are used in all classes of computing devices. Arm has two lines of graphics processing units (GPUs), Mali, and the newer Immortalis (which includes hardware-based ray-tracing).[6]
Arm's main CPU competitors in servers include IBM, Intel and AMD.[7] 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 technology companies Imagination Technologies (PowerVR), Qualcomm (Adreno), and increasingly Nvidia, AMD, Samsung and Intel. While competing in GPUs, Qualcomm, Samsung and Nvidia all have combined their GPUs with Arm-licensed CPUs.
Arm had a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It also had a secondary listing of American depositary receipts on New York's Nasdaq. However Japanese multinational conglomerate 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.[8][9] The transaction was completed on 5 September 2016.[10][11] A planned takeover deal by Nvidia, announced in 2020, collapsed in February 2022,[12] with SoftBank subsequently deciding to pursue an initial public offering on the Nasdaq in 2023, valuing Arm at US$54.5 billion.[13]
Partnerships[edit]
University of Michigan[edit]
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.[132][133]
Arduino[edit]
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.[134]
Intel[edit]
In October 2018, ARM Holdings partnered with Intel in order to share code for embedded systems through the Yocto Project.[135] On 12 April 2023, ARM Holdings partnered with Intel Foundry Services to bring Arm SoCs to Intel's 18A process.[136]
Mbed OS and Pelion[edit]
On 20 October 2018, Arm unveiled Arm Mbed OS, an open source operating system for IoT.[137] On 8 October 2019, Arm announced a new Partner Governance model for partners to collaborate on the future roadmap. Partners include: Analog Devices, Cypress, Maxim Integrated, Nuvoton, NXP, Renesas, Realtek, Samsung, Silicon Labs and u-blox.[138] In November 2020, Arm spun out the entire IoT software division as Pelion, a separate but wholly owned subsidiary of Arm.[139] In October 2022 the IoT services of Pelion were purchased by Izuma Networks, an Austin, Texas based startup.[140]
Autonomous Vehicle Computing Consortium (AVCC)[edit]
On 8 October 2019, Arm announced the Autonomous Vehicle Computing Consortium (AVCC) to collaborate and accelerate development of self-driving cars. Members include Arm, Bosch, Continental, Denso, General Motors, Nvidia, NXP and Toyota.[141]