ARM Holdings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_RISC_Machines

ARM Holdings

 (Redirected from Advanced RISC Machines)

 

ARM Holdings plc

Type	Public limited company
Traded as	LSE: ARM   NASDAQ: ARMH
Industry	Semiconductors
Founded	1990 (Cambridge)
Founder(s)	Robin Saxby, Jamie Urquhart, Mike Muller, Tudor Brown, Lee Smith, John Biggs, Harry Oldham, Dave Howard, Pete Harrod, Harry Meekings, Al Thomas, Andy Merritt, David Seal[1]
Headquarters	Cambridge, England, United Kingdom
Key people	John Buchanan (Chairman) Simon Segars (CEO)
Products	Microprocessor designs andgraphics processing unit(GPU) designs
Revenue	£576.9 million (2012)[2]
Operating income	£208.1 million (2012)[2]
Net income	£160.7 million (2012)[2]
Employees	circa 2,000 (2012)[3]
Website	arm.com

 

 

ARM Holdings plc(Public limited company, a type of limited company whose shares may be sold to the public) (ARM) is a British multinational semiconductor and software design company with its head office in Cambridge, England. Its largest business is designing processors (CPU) bearing the ARM name, although it also designs software development tools under the RealView and Keil brands, systems and platforms, system-on-a-chip (SoC) infrastructure and software. It is considered to be market dominant in the field of processors for mobile phones (smartphones or otherwise) and tablet computers and is arguably the best-known of the 'Silicon Fen' companies.^[5]

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 from microcontrollers in embedded systems – including real-time safety systems (cars' ABS),^[6] smartTVs (Google TV) and all modern smartwatches (such as Qualcomm Toq) – up to smartphones (such as all Apple's iPhones), tablets (such as all Apple's iPads), laptops (some Chromebook versions), desktops^[7][8](first use was in the Acorn Archimedes), servers^[9] and supercomputers/HPC.^[10][11][12]

ARM's Mali line of graphics processing units (GPU) is used in laptops (some Chromebook versions), Android tablets (over 50% market share^[13]) and smartphones (such as some versions of Samsung's products up to the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 tablet and Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone) and smartwatches (Samsung Galaxy Gear). It is third most popular in mobile devices.^[14]

ARM's main CPU competitors include Intel (Atom), Imagination Technologies (MIPS) and AMD, and its GPU competitors include Imagination Technologies (PowerVR), Qualcomm (Adreno) and increasingly Nvidia and Intel. Qualcomm and Nvidia combine their GPUs with an ARM licensed CPU while Intel doesn't.

ARM has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It has a secondary listing on NASDAQ.

Contents

[hide] 

• 1 History
  • 1.1 Name
  • 1.2 Founding
  • 1.3 Acquisitions
    • 1.3.1 1999
    • 1.3.2 2000
    • 1.3.3 2001
    • 1.3.4 2003
    • 1.3.5 2004
    • 1.3.6 2005
    • 1.3.7 2006
    • 1.3.8 2011
    • 1.3.9 2013
• 2 Operations
  • 2.1 Business model
  • 2.2 Facilities
• 3 Technology
• 4 Licensees
  • 4.1 ARM core licensees
  • 4.2 ARM architectural licensees
  • 4.3 Mali licensees
• 5 Sales and market share
• 6 Partnerships
  • 6.1 Microsoft
  • 6.2 University of Michigan
• 7 Senior management
• 8 See also
• 9 References
• 10 External links

History[edit]

Name[edit]

The acronym ARM, first used in 1983, originally stood for "Acorn RISC Machine", the processor from Acorn Computers, its first RISC processor used in the original Acorn Archimedes and one of the first RISC processors. 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 Ltd." Then, at the time of the IPO in 1998, the company name was changed to "ARM Holdings",^[15] often just called ARM just as the processors.

Founding[edit]

The company was founded in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd and structured as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and VLSI Technology.^[16][17][18] 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 their Newton project. Its first profitable year was 1993. The company's Silicon Valley and Tokyo offices were opened in 1994. In 1997, ARM invested in Palmchip Corporation to provide a system on chip platforms and to enter into the disk drive market.^[19] In 1998 the Company changed its name from Advanced RISC Machines Ltd to ARM Ltd.^[20] The Company was first listed on the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ in 1998.^[21]Apple's shareholding had fallen to 14.8% by February 1999.^[22]

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.^[23]

Acquisitions[edit]

1999[edit]

• Micrologic Solutions, a software consulting company based in Cambridge^[24]

2000[edit]

• Allant Software, a developer of debugging software^[25]
• Infinite Designs, a design company based in Sheffield^[26]
• EuroMIPS a smart card design house in Sophia Antipolis, France^[27]

2001[edit]

• The engineering team of Noral Micrologics, a debug hardware and software company based in Blackburn, UK^[28]

2003[edit]

• Adelante Technologies of Belgium, creating its OptimoDE data engines business, a form of lightweight DSP engine^[29]

2004[edit]

• Axys Design Automation, a developer of ESL design tools^[30] and Artisan Components, a designer of Physical IP (standard cell libraries, memory compilers,PHYs etc.), the building blocks of integrated circuits^[31]

2005[edit]

• KEIL Software, a leading developer of software development tools for the microcontroller (MCU) market, including 8051 and C16x platforms.^[32] ARM also acquired the engineering team of PowerEscape.

2006[edit]

• Falanx (now called ARM Norway), a developer of 3D graphics accelerators^[33] and SOISIC, who specialise in developing silicon-on-insulator physical IP^[34]

2011[edit]

• Obsidian Software Inc., a privately held company that creates processor verification products^[35]
• Prolific, a developer of automated layout optimisation software tools, and the Prolific team will join the ARM physical IP team^[36]

2013[edit]

• Internet of Things startup Sensinode^[37]
• Cadence’s PANTA family of high-resolution display processor and scaling coprocessor IP cores^[38]

Operations[edit]

Business model[edit]

Unlike most traditional microprocessor suppliers, such as: Intel, Freescale (formerly Motorola) and Renesas (formerly Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric),^[39] ARM only creates and licenses its technology as intellectual property (IP), rather than manufacturing and sellIng its own physical: CPUs, GPUs, SoCs or microcontrollers. This model is similar to fellow British design houses: ARC International, and Imagination Technologies who have similarly been designing and licensincing GPUs, CPUs, and SoCs, along with supplying tooling and various design and support services to their licensees.

Facilities[edit]

The company has offices and design centres across the world, including San Jose, California, Austin, Texas, and Olympia, Washington in the United States;Trondheim in Norway; Lund in Sweden; Sophia Antipolis in France; Munich in Germany; Yokohama in Japan; China, Taiwan, India, and Slovenia.^[40]

An ARM processor in a Hewlett-Packard PSC-1315 printer.

Technology[edit]

A characteristic feature of ARM processors is their low electric power consumption, which makes them particularly suitable for use in portable devices.^[41] 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. Today ARMs account for over 75% of all 32-bit embedded CPUs.^[42]

ARM processors are used as the main CPU for most mobile phones, including those manufactured by Apple, HTC, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung;^[43] many PDAs and handhelds, like the Apple iPod and iPad,^[44][45] Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS,Game Park GP32 and GamePark Holdings GP2X; as well as many other applications, including GPS navigation devices, digital cameras, digital televisions, network devices and storage.^[46] The WLAN processor of Sony's PlayStation Portable is an older ARM9.^[47]

Licensees[edit]

ARM offers several microprocessor core designs that have been "publicly licensed" 830 times including 117 times for their newer "application processors" (non-microcontroller) used in such applications as smartphones and tablets.^[48] Six of those companies have a license for the their most powerful processor core, the 64-bit Cortex-A57 (some including ARM's other 64-bit core the Cortex-A53) and four have a license to their most powerful 32-bit core, the Cortex-A15.

Cores for 32-bit architectures include Cortex-A15, Cortex-A12, 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: ARM Cortex-R7, ARM Cortex-R5, ARM Cortex-R4, ARM Cortex-M4, ARM Cortex-M3, ARM Cortex-M1,ARM Cortex-M0+, and ARM Cortex-M0 for licencing; the three most popular licensing models are the "Perpetual (Implementation) License", "Term License" and "Per Use License".^[49]

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 radio basebands (for mobile phones).

ARM licenses their instruction sets, 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,^[50] and also requires the necessary engineering power to design a CPU based on the instruction set.

Processors believed to be designed independently from ARM, by vendors for whom no architecture license has been announced, include Apple's A6, A6X, and A7^[51](used in iPhone 5, iPad and iPhone 5S), and Qualcomm's Snapdragon^[52] (used in smartphones such as the US version of the Samsung Galaxy S4).

ARM core licensees[edit]

Companies that are current licensees of the 64-bit ARMv8-A core designs include: AMD,^[53] AppliedMicro (X-Gene),^[54] Broadcom,^[53] Calxeda,^[53] HiSilicon,^[53]Rockchip,^[55] Samsung,^[53] and STMicroelectronics.^[53]

Companies that are current or former licensees of 32-bit ARM core designs include AMD,^[56] Broadcom,^[57] Freescale,^[58][59] Huawei (HiSilicon division),^[60]IBM,^[61] Infineon Technologies (Infineon XMC 32-bit MCU families),^[62] Intel (older "ARM11 MPCore"), LG,^[63][64] NXP Semiconductors,^[65] Renesas,^[66] Rockchip,^[55]Samsung,^[67][68] STMicroelectronics,^[69] and Texas Instruments.^[70]

ARM architectural licensees[edit]

Companies with a 64-bit ARMv8-A architectural licence include: Broadcom,^[71] Cavium,^[72] and Huawei.^[73]

Companies with a 32-bit ARM architectural licence include: Broadcom (ARMv7),^[71] Faraday Technology (ARMv4, ARMv5),^[74] Marvell Technology Group,^[75]Microsoft,^[76] and Nvidia.^[77]

Mali licensees[edit]

Companies that are current licensees of the Mali GPU designs include: Rockchip.^[55]

Sales and market share[edit]

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.^[78]

In the fourth quarter of 2010, 1.8 billion chips based on an ARM design were manufactured.^[79]

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.^[80]

In May 2012, Dell announced the Copper platform, a server based on Marvell’s ARM powered devices.^[81] In October 2012, ARM announced the first set of early licensees of the 64-bit-capable Cortex-A57 processor.^[53]

ARM's goal is by 2015 to have ARM-based processors in more than half of all tablets, mini-notebooks and other mobile PCs sold.^[82]

ARM core sales[83][84]
Year	Billion units
2013 Q1-3	7.5
2012	8.7
2011	7.9
2010	6.1
2009	3.9
2008	4.0
2007	2.9
2006	2.4
2005	1.662
2004	1.272
2003	0.782
2002	0.456
2001	0.420
2000	0.367
1999	0.175
1998	0.051
1997	0.009
Total	48.594

Partnerships[edit]

Microsoft[edit]

At 2011 CES, Microsoft revealed that Windows 8 operating system will run on ARM architecture platforms.^[85] Following this, Microsoft demonstrated internet Explorer 10. For around 30 seconds of the 90-minute talk, they mentioned that some of the demos were running on an ARM computer.^[86] During Microsoft's presentation of Windows 8 on 1 June 2011, a handful of the company's hardware partners showed off tablets and notebooks running the OS, including ARM instead of Intel or AMD.^[87]

University of Michigan[edit]

In 2011, ARM renewed a five-year, $5 million research partnership with University of Michigan, which extended their existing research partnership to 2015. This partnership will focus on ultra-low energy and sustainable computing.^[88][89]

Senior management[edit]

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.^[90][91] East said in March 2013 that he would retire from ARM in May, with president Simon Segars taking over as CEO.^[92]

See also[edit]

• Imagination Technologies
• ARC International

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagination_Technologies

Imagination Technologies

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 

Imagination Technologies Group plc

Type	Public company
Traded as	LSE: IMG
Industry	Technology
Founded	1985
Headquarters	Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, UK
Key people	Geoff Shingles (Chairman) Sir Hossein Yassaie (CEO) John Metcalfe (COO)
Products	Semiconductor intellectual property Digital radio
Revenue	£127.5 million (2012)[1]
Operating income	£28.4 million (2012)[1]
Net income	£20.5 million (2012)[1]
Employees	900 (2011)[1]
Divisions	Technology, PURE Digital
Website	www.imgtec.com

Imagination Technologies Group plc (LSE: IMG) is a British-based maker of a mobile graphics and microprocessor chip technology primarily known for its PowerVR graphics and Pure DAB radio divisions. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

Contents

[hide] 

• 1 History
• 2 Operations and Products
• 3 See also
• 4 References
• 5 External links

History[edit]

The Company was founded in 1985 as VideoLogic and originally focused on graphics, sound acceleration, home audio systems, video-capture and video-conferencing systems.^[2]

It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in July 1994.^[3] The following year it entered into a licensing agreement over its PowerVR technology with NEC (now Renesas) who took a 2.29% stake in the Company for £1.6 million and acquired the rights to manufacture and sell the chip.^[4] On 2 December 1997, NEC subscribed 2.3 million (1.5%) new shares at a price of 56.5p, taking its total stake to 3.5%.^[5] In 1999 the Company refocused on intellectual property licensing generally and changed its name to Imagination Technologies.^[2]

On 23 March 2000, Imagination Technologies acquired Ensigma, a private company specialising in Digital Signal Processing, for a maximum consideration of £5 million.^[6]

On 26 September 2001, Imagination Technologies acquired Cross Products Limited, a company designing and producing development tools for META DSP IP cores and Renesas's SuperH architecture processors under CodeScape brand, for £4.2 million.^[7]

In October 2006, Intel Corporation acquired a 2.9% stake i.e. 6 million shares in the Company for £5.28 million.^[8]

On 24 November 2008, Imagination Technologies announced a license agreement it signed with a new partner, then undisclosed, for a high-performance version of its POWERVR SGX graphics processor chip: this was later revealed to be Apple Inc.^[9] In December 2008, Apple Inc purchased a 3.6% stake in the company for £3.2 million.^[9]

In June 2009, it was announced that Intel's stake had increased to 14% after it had acquired 25m shares.^[10] One week later, Intel acquired another 5m shares from the Saad Group (based in Saudi Arabia), and its shareholding rose to 16.02%.^[11]

Days later, Apple Inc announced it had subscribed for 2.2m new shares at 142.75p each and made market purchases of another 11.52m shares, raising its stake to 9.5%;^[12] Saad Group, who had held 44.6m shares i.e. 20.3% of the Company as at 30 June 2008, was thought to be the vendor of these shares, and had been reportedly forced to divest after its bank froze its accounts.^[13]

On 17 November 2010, Imagination Technologies announced its intention to acquire HelloSoft, one of the world’s leading providers of Video and Voice over Internet Protocol and wireless LAN technologies, for a maximum consideration of $47 million.^[14]

On 14 December 2010, Imagination Technologies acquired Caustic Graphics, developer of hardware/software real-time ray-tracing graphics technology which was founded by a group of former Apple engineers, for $27 million.^[15]

On 14 December 2011, Imagination Technologies announced that it had signed a licensing agreement with Qualcomm. The company signed an agreement for the display IP from its PowerVR portfolio.^[16]

On 3 January 2012, Imagination Technologies announced that it will invest totalling £5 million, in Toumaz Microsystems, a wireless intercom spinout of Toumaz Ltd., and will own 25% of the business.^[17]

In June 2012, Imagination Technologies acquired Nethra Imaging, a semiconductor and systems company focused on delivering video and imaging solutions.^[18]

On 17 December 2012, Imagination Technologies beat Ceva Inc in the race to buy processing technology firm MIPS with a knockout offer of $100 million.^[19]

On 29 December 2012 its Chief Executive Officer, Hossein Yassaie, was awarded a knighthood in the 2013 New Year Honours. The award was given in recognition of his services to technology and innovation.^[20]

Operations and Products[edit]

The Company has two activities:^[1]

Semiconductor intellectual property

• PowerVR – developing GPU-technology (also see List of PowerVR products)
• MIPS Technologies – developing CPU-technology (also see MIPS instruction set, List of MIPS microprocessor cores)

Consumer electronics

• PURE Digital (formerly VideoLogic)