Arm: The World's Best-Kept Technology Secret

For 30 years, a UK tech company, founded in a barn not too far from Cambridge University, has been thoughtfully working behind the scenes to deliver the most energy-efficient computing power on the planet. This company, Arm, while not widely known outside the semiconductor industry, has licensed its computer chip architecture and designs to the world’s leading tech companies and has played a critical role in fueling the smartphone revolution. Today, Arm technology powers 99% of the world’s smartphones. Tomorrow, the world’s laptops, automobiles, computer servers, and smart IoT devices will be similarly powered by Arm.

Cristiano Amon, CEO of Qualcomm, said recently in an interview, “When we look today, I think the trend is that everything is moving to Arm.”

Now, an entire industry is encouraging Arm to come front and center and into the leadership spotlight. Companies from the smallest startups to giants such as AWS, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are leveraging Arm to drive incredible innovations.

Every company is a technology company 

It used to be that technology and technological know-how were for a select few. Now it turns out that every company and organization in the world needs to turn up the volume on their tech-savviness. For example, it’s not just traditional semiconductor companies that need to understand the world of computer chips. It is now the fiscal responsibility of large OEMs in the auto industry, insurance companies, hospitals, retailers, cloud computing providers, and every company that uses a data center, to understand the underlying technology that powers their computing future. As companies make technology buying and building decisions that impact their future success and competitive advantage, it will be important they ask the question, “Is my technology Arm-based?”

Here are a few reasons: 

If you’re building a product that requires a microprocessor, you will need a special combination of processing power and energy efficiency to address the ever-increasing expectations of your customers and a next-generation user experience. To effectively compete you may also need to accelerate your time to market. 

“By having access to a broader range of models on Arm Virtual Hardware, we can easily estimate performance across a wider spectrum of IoT devices, all in the cloud,” said Zach Shelby, co-founder and CEO, Edge Impulse. “This will ultimately provide developers with a faster turnaround and give them the confidence they need to deploy optimized models to edge devices in the field.”

If you are developing and deploying software in the cloud, you’ll need a cloud service provider offering Arm-based servers like AWS with the Graviton processor where 80% of their leading customers choose Arm-based servers to reap the benefits of high-performance computing coupled with exceptional power efficiency to run new workloads faster and more efficiently.

Liz Fong-Jones, principal developer advocate for Honeycomb, recently spoke at AWS Summit New York on the success the organization has had with AWS Graviton2/3. She later engaged with a number of attendees via Twitter, who were sharing similar stories of cost-performance benefits, “Arm is inevitable. It’s the future. It’s now on every major cloud provider: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Oracle … Welcome to the future, everyone.” 

If you are developing technologies to lower carbon emissions or drive more-sustainable solutions for the planet, Arm’s power-efficient computing architecture enables ultra-low power systems that can deliver the data you need for your applications. For example, Rainforest Connection is working with conservationists on a project in Indonesia, where they have deployed Arm CPU- and GPU-based devices to listen for the tell-tale sound of heavy plant machinery and chainsaws in the fight against illegal logging.

Topher White, founder and CEO of Rainforest Connection said, “When it comes to mobile and Android technology, Arm’s influence is inescapable. I could have tried to create a device from scratch and build the whole board, but I realized I could go on eBay and pick up an old Android smartphone for $5. Powered by Arm chips, these smartphones already featured connected networks, could run incredible software, and had fantastic ecosystems.” 

In a future where every IT department evolves to become an AI department, you’ll need to leverage Arm’s vast computational footprint represented by more than 225 billion Arm-based chips in the world to make sure your machine learning and AI workloads work everywhere. 

Said Brian Kelleher, senior vice president of hardware engineering at NVIDIA, “NVIDIA sees enormous opportunities to bring the transformative powers of AI deeper into gaming, autonomous vehicles, enterprise data centers and embedded devices. Through our ongoing collaboration with Arm, we look forward to using Armv9 (architecture) to deliver a wide range of once unimaginable computing possibilities.” 

On Arm: your computing future may depend on it 

As Arm moves into its more visible chapter, the company sits at the epicenter of innovation, defining the future of computing and opportunities for all. The right technology at the right time with the right outcomes. Arm-based chips are deployed in everything from the tiniest of sensors to 99% of all smartphones to the world’s most powerful supercomputers. As a result, the company has a unique once-in-a-generation view of what’s possible with technology, a deep understanding of what the future of computing needs to be, and a vast industry ecosystem that can execute and turn any idea into reality. Don’t forget to ask the most important question of your technology future: “Is it on Arm?”

This article was written and supplied by Arm. Header image: Courtesy of Arm