Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And we are back
Speaker 1: with the story about ARM ARM Limited in later ARM Holdings,
Speaker 1: and the family of processors that grew out of a
Speaker 1: British computing company from the nineteen seventies. If you haven't
Speaker 1: listened to the first part of this, I recommend you
Speaker 1: go back and listen to that one first because it's sequential.
Speaker 1: But we left off in our last episode with the
Speaker 1: launch of the ARMS six family of microprocessors, confusingly the
Speaker 1: fourth generation of them, and the failure of the Apple
Speaker 1: Newton product, which partly prompted ARM CEO Robin Saxby to
Speaker 1: adopt a strategy to license our architecture technology to other
Speaker 1: companies back in in other words, to license the the
Speaker 1: intellectual property to other fabricators, so ARM would not be
Speaker 1: a manufacturing company. It would design microprocessors, and it would
Speaker 1: design instruction sets for those microprocessors, and then license that
Speaker 1: information to other companies that could then make these chips themselves,
Speaker 1: and even make them and sell them to other customers.
Speaker 1: That's kind of how this could work, and ARM would
Speaker 1: end up receiving an upfront licensing fee and some royalties
Speaker 1: as well, joining v L s I, which had previously
Speaker 1: been the sole fabricator of ARM chips, where the Japanese
Speaker 1: company Sharp and the British semiconductor company g E C
Speaker 1: plus E Semiconductors. Now this would just be the beginning
Speaker 1: of companies manufacturing our microprocessors. And as I mentioned, the
Speaker 1: licensing deal had two parts them. First was the upfront
Speaker 1: licensing fee for the technology, so this was a flat fee,
Speaker 1: and if a company like Sharp wanted to manufacture ARMED chips,
Speaker 1: it would first have to pay that flat fee in
Speaker 1: order to do so. But on the back end was
Speaker 1: a royalty fee which might not kick in for a
Speaker 1: few years, in fact, in some cases up to five
Speaker 1: years after products were being sold. That's when the royalties
Speaker 1: would start to kick in. So as companies would sell
Speaker 1: Armed chips or selling products that used ARM designed chips,
Speaker 1: then ARM would end up earning a small amount on
Speaker 1: those sales. Would prove to be an enormous year for ARM.
Speaker 1: Not only did it see the launch of the ARMS
Speaker 1: six in the form of the first Apple Newton, which
Speaker 1: admittedly is perhaps not the most auspicious of beginnings, and
Speaker 1: not only did it transition into a sort of intellectual
Speaker 1: property company, it also landed a deal with Texas Instruments,
Speaker 1: a company famous for lots of electronic devices is including
Speaker 1: popular scientific calculators. T I would license the ARM architecture
Speaker 1: and would become not only a valuable partner for ARM,
Speaker 1: but also a sort of almost like a sales rep.
Speaker 1: Like I was saying. You know, companies would make ARM
Speaker 1: processors and then some sometimes sell those to other companies.
Speaker 1: So when hand set manufacturer Nokia began looking for a
Speaker 1: processor solution for its upcoming mobile phones, Texas Instruments suggested ARM.
Speaker 1: Nokia balked at the idea at first because the cost
Speaker 1: of the ARMS six chips was higher than the company
Speaker 1: wanted to pay for components for its handsets. It would
Speaker 1: mean either Nokia would have to eat that cost, thus
Speaker 1: cutting into profits, maybe even leading at selling at a loss,
Speaker 1: which isn't really acceptable, or they would have to price
Speaker 1: the handsets at a level higher than the market would
Speaker 1: maybe support so they could price themselves out. The phones
Speaker 1: would be too expensive, no one would buy them. ARMS
Speaker 1: response was quick, which was helped by the fact that
Speaker 1: the team at ARM was still relatively small. The company
Speaker 1: could actually be really nimble and respond to things quickly,
Speaker 1: and they got to work designing a new instruction set,
Speaker 1: one that was just sixteen bits rather than thirty two.
Speaker 1: If you need to have a refresher on that, listen
Speaker 1: to the last podcast. But it lowered the memory demands
Speaker 1: for the technology and thus reduced the cost of the
Speaker 1: components required, and it was called the ARM seven T
Speaker 1: d M I. The T d M I stands for
Speaker 1: a thumb debug fast Multiplier and enhanced i c e.
Speaker 1: The only bit I really want to talk about among
Speaker 1: those right now is thumb and that was a special
Speaker 1: instruction set, and it was this instruction set that allowed
Speaker 1: for the sixteen bit approach. To go into more detail
Speaker 1: would frankly require a deeper understanding than I possess, So
Speaker 1: rather than fumble about with attempted explanations, I'll just leave
Speaker 1: it at this. Essentially, it was is able to take
Speaker 1: thirty two bits set of instructions and dumb it down
Speaker 1: to sixteen bit. That is drastically oversimplifying what it did,
Speaker 1: but it's it serves its purpose for this episode, Texas
Speaker 1: Instruments licensed the technology from ARM and then sold the
Speaker 1: chips to Nokia, and then Nokia then used that chip
Speaker 1: to power the Nokia sixty one ten hand set, which
Speaker 1: was phenomenally successful in Europe. Nokia would introduce a version
Speaker 1: of this phone for the North American market with some
Speaker 1: minor changes to the hand set. This one was called
Speaker 1: the six nine, and the candy bar style phone would
Speaker 1: become one of the early big successes in cellular phones.
Speaker 1: I remember having a Nokia. I don't think it was
Speaker 1: this model. I think it was actually a little later,
Speaker 1: but I remember playing Snake on it. You guys remember
Speaker 1: Snake Anyway. More than that, the success of the Nokia
Speaker 1: sixty one ten led to the big success for ARM
Speaker 1: as the ARMS seven technology. She became the go to
Speaker 1: architecture for mobile phones, and to call it a success
Speaker 1: really understates things. More than ten billion with a B
Speaker 1: ARMS seven chips were produced since they were first introduced
Speaker 1: in nineteen and the Nokia phone itself wouldn't debut until now.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind those chips are being made by companies
Speaker 1: all around the world. ARM is licensing the design to
Speaker 1: those companies now in the meantime, ARM was developing a
Speaker 1: new generation of this technology, ARM eight, which confusingly marks
Speaker 1: the fourth generation of ARM processors, would emerge in nineteen
Speaker 1: nine six. While it followed the same process as the
Speaker 1: ARMS seven ten line, it packed in twice the performance
Speaker 1: with a more optimized design. It also revamped the instruction pipeline, which, hey,
Speaker 1: that opens up another opportunity to talk about how that works.
Speaker 1: The idea behind an instruction pipeline is to maximize the
Speaker 1: usefulness of a processor by delivering LLL instructions to the
Speaker 1: processor simultaneously. So rather than have parts of the processor
Speaker 1: kind of going dormant because they're not needed for a
Speaker 1: particular process, the goal was to keep all the parts
Speaker 1: of the processor busy in an effort to reduce the
Speaker 1: amount of time that the processor takes to complete a
Speaker 1: certain task or program. Pipelines do this by delivering sequential
Speaker 1: steps for specific tasks that different processor units can handle.
Speaker 1: The ARMS seven architecture had a three stage pipeline divided
Speaker 1: into the instructions for fetch, decode, and execute. These are
Speaker 1: basic instructions. The ARM eight pipeline introduced a five stage
Speaker 1: approach which added instructions for memory access and writing to memories,
Speaker 1: so essentially reading from memory and writing to it. Really,
Speaker 1: what this means is that the design optimizes how instructions
Speaker 1: arrive at the processor and how much more of the
Speaker 1: processor is in use at any given moment to complete
Speaker 1: tasks faster. As Night was coming to a close, ARM
Speaker 1: was entering a new phase of its existence. It had
Speaker 1: up to that point been a privately held company. The
Speaker 1: income for that year measured up to around two point
Speaker 1: nine million pounds, which if we converted that to US
Speaker 1: dollars and adjusted for inflation, is somewhere around seven and
Speaker 1: a half million dollars. But to be accurate, I really
Speaker 1: should just give a range of values, because we're dealing
Speaker 1: with both, you know, translating from one form of currency
Speaker 1: to another, plus adjusting for inflation. So really it could
Speaker 1: be anywhere between six point four and nine point one
Speaker 1: million dollars, which is pretty big range. The company itself
Speaker 1: was worth in excess of twenty million pounds, a princely sum. Indeed,
Speaker 1: it was time to take the company public. Now I've
Speaker 1: talked about this process in other episodes of Tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: but generally speaking, the process of taking up private company public.
Speaker 1: First of all, It involves an awful lot of paperwork,
Speaker 1: as people have to determine the value of the company
Speaker 1: when all its assets and debts are taking into account,
Speaker 1: and that value in turn guides how many shares and
Speaker 1: how much money per share will be on offer when
Speaker 1: the company goes public and people can can buy a
Speaker 1: stake in the company. The idea here is that the
Speaker 1: number of shares and the price per share will reflect
Speaker 1: the value of the company. You know, you can't just
Speaker 1: keep printing out shares at the same price, because it
Speaker 1: all has to kind of link back to how much
Speaker 1: is the company actually worth. It's actually a pretty complicated thing,
Speaker 1: and it's partly dependent upon our perception of a company's
Speaker 1: worth as opposed to a you know, hard, concrete, universal,
Speaker 1: quote unquote real number. Now, at this point, I think
Speaker 1: it's good to reflect a moment on Acorn Computers. If
Speaker 1: you listen to the first episode, you know that ARM
Speaker 1: spun off from Acorn Computers, which was a company that
Speaker 1: used the risk based processors and the personal computers that
Speaker 1: manufactured the Archimedes computers. Well, things had taken a turn
Speaker 1: over at Acorn as ARM was making a move to
Speaker 1: go public. Much of Acorn's management was focused on that process. Now, remember,
Speaker 1: ARM was originally a joint venture between Acorn, Apple Computers
Speaker 1: and v L s I, which was a fabrication company.
Speaker 1: Acorn management changed and after the company experienced a substantial
Speaker 1: loss in the new management decided on a massive restructuring
Speaker 1: that involved selling off several divisions to other companies and
Speaker 1: ultimately renaming Acorn Computers itself. The company transformed into a
Speaker 1: new one called Element fourteen. Now, if you take a
Speaker 1: quick glance at the periodic table, which I imagine you
Speaker 1: keep handy just as I do, you will see that
Speaker 1: Element fourteen is Silicon Clever. Element fourteen wouldn't be around
Speaker 1: in that form for very long as an Element fourteen
Speaker 1: the company Silicon, As it turns out, it's still in
Speaker 1: good shape. But Broad Calm Corporation acquired Element fourteen in
Speaker 1: two thousand. Broad Calm, in turn would later be acquired
Speaker 1: by Evago Technologies, though it still operates as Broad Calm Corporation.
Speaker 1: But this all reminds us that, as Quigon Jen once
Speaker 1: said famously, there's always a bigger fish. While Acorn Computers
Speaker 1: effectively vanished due to acquisitions, ARM continued to go strong
Speaker 1: The company listed on both the London Stock Exchange and
Speaker 1: the NASDAQ on April seventeenth, changing its name to ARM
Speaker 1: Holdings in the process. The reason for listing on both
Speaker 1: stock exchanges was due to a mixture of practicality and appreciation.
Speaker 1: America was leading in the text space, so listing on
Speaker 1: the NAZDAC just made sense, but the ARM executives also
Speaker 1: wanted Acorn shareholders back in England to remain involved with
Speaker 1: the company. Interest in the company pushed the stock price higher,
Speaker 1: and before long, ARM went from being a twenty million
Speaker 1: pound company to a company that was valued at more
Speaker 1: than a billion dollars. However, not all of that would
Speaker 1: end up being good news, at least in the short term.
Speaker 1: ARMS rise and valuation was in step with a general
Speaker 1: trended technology that proved to be unsustainable, and I'll get
Speaker 1: back to that in just a moment. Another thing that
Speaker 1: happened in was the release of the ARM nine group
Speaker 1: of processor cores. This move also saw a departure from
Speaker 1: the way ARM had been designing processors. Up through ARM eight.
Speaker 1: The company had followed a von Neumann model sometimes called
Speaker 1: the Princeton model, and the basic concept of this model
Speaker 1: is that you have a system that has a control unit,
Speaker 1: a logic unit, and a memory unit. Input would prompt
Speaker 1: the system to perform operations on data, which results in output,
Speaker 1: which in turn gets sent to some sort of output
Speaker 1: device like a display or a printer. And it's named
Speaker 1: after John von Neumann, who described such a system in
Speaker 1: a paper called the First Draft of a Report on
Speaker 1: the EDVAC. EDVAC was an early electronic computer that ran
Speaker 1: on binary data. With a von Neumann system, a processor
Speaker 1: cannot both fetch instructions and run a data operation at
Speaker 1: the same time because both of these processes share the
Speaker 1: same bus. Now, you can think of a bus as
Speaker 1: a data pathway, and it connects different components in a
Speaker 1: computer system or a circuit, and you can't have two
Speaker 1: things share the same pathway at the same time. Typically,
Speaker 1: I often think of it similar to like pipes in
Speaker 1: a plumbing system. The ARM nine family of processors changed
Speaker 1: to a Harvard architecture, which has dedicated buses for stuff
Speaker 1: like memory and fetching instructions. And since this approach has
Speaker 1: paths specifically for each of those tasks, there's no bottleneck
Speaker 1: if you need to do both of them simultaneously. Now,
Speaker 1: for certain implementations that doesn't really matter that much, so
Speaker 1: von Neumann approach is perfectly fine in some cases, but
Speaker 1: as you get into circuit complexity, being able to fetch
Speaker 1: instructions and read or write data to memory can really
Speaker 1: speed things up. ARM recognized that it was time to
Speaker 1: transitionto a more robust circuit design as lightweight computational devices
Speaker 1: were putting heavier requirements on processors. The ARM nine chips
Speaker 1: also saw improvements in heat production, meaning they were producing
Speaker 1: less heat than their comparable ARMS seven predecessors. ARM ten
Speaker 1: would not be far behind. It launched in late nine,
Speaker 1: and as you would expect, the new micro architecture included
Speaker 1: some benefits over older designs, but frankly, there wasn't anything
Speaker 1: so incredible that I feel that I should really break
Speaker 1: it out in this episode. We'll just keep in mind
Speaker 1: that the company was keeping up its process of research
Speaker 1: and development and then licensing the resulting designs to various
Speaker 1: fabricators around the world, because otherwise this episode gets way
Speaker 1: too dry away too fast. In the company made an acquisition.
Speaker 1: It purchased a software consulting company called Micrologic Solutions. Like
Speaker 1: ARM Holdings, this company was also based out of Cambridge, England.
Speaker 1: The following year it made three more acquisitions. Euromps that
Speaker 1: was a company out of France that designed smart cards.
Speaker 1: Those are integrated circuit cards have an embedded circuit chip.
Speaker 1: They act as a kind of authorization device. The second
Speaker 1: was a Lot Software. It was a company that made
Speaker 1: debugging software, and the third was Infinite Designs, another English
Speaker 1: design company, And in two thousand one the company purchased
Speaker 1: a division out of Neural Micrologics, another debugging company in England.
Speaker 1: But around this time the X sector had become the
Speaker 1: new gold Rush, with entrepreneurs launching new companies by the day,
Speaker 1: many of which were tied in some way to the
Speaker 1: growth of the Internet. In particular, in the late nineties,
Speaker 1: the general public was really just starting to understand that
Speaker 1: the Internet was a thing. Previously, the Internet had largely
Speaker 1: been the stuff of research labs, college computer labs, some
Speaker 1: specific industries, the American military. But then we got the
Speaker 1: Worldwide Web in the early nineties, and slowly but surely,
Speaker 1: the average person began to catch on to what the
Speaker 1: Internet was. And one thing lots of people were sure
Speaker 1: about was that the Internet was the future of all
Speaker 1: commerce and business. You could argue convincingly that they were
Speaker 1: all right. But the problem was, back then there wasn't
Speaker 1: as much of an understanding around how this would come about.
Speaker 1: It was just generally considered to be a foregone conclusion,
Speaker 1: and so numerous businesses popped up with the intent of
Speaker 1: cashing in on the tech craze in general and the
Speaker 1: Internet in particular. Investors went bonkers, and so did some
Speaker 1: of these companies, as many of them would go on
Speaker 1: to lavishly spend money on stuff like office spaces and
Speaker 1: perks without you know, figuring out how the company would
Speaker 1: ultimately make money. And this trend proved to be unsustainable
Speaker 1: in the long run. How's that for a cliffhanger. I mean,
Speaker 1: you guys know what's coming, but still, you know, structurally
Speaker 1: it's a cliffhanger. Anyway, we'll be back to talk about
Speaker 1: it after this quick break. Eventually, due to a few
Speaker 1: different factors, reality would pull the rug out from under
Speaker 1: the tech sector and we got the great Dot Com crash.
Speaker 1: Companies that have been valued in the millions of dollars
Speaker 1: lost all their value rapidly as investors lost confidence, and
Speaker 1: ventures that just showed no signs of having a business
Speaker 1: plan or means of making revenue. But it wasn't just
Speaker 1: the questionable companies that suffered the effects of the crash
Speaker 1: rippled through the tech sector, hitting more established companies with actual,
Speaker 1: solid business plans, and that included ARM. Now part of
Speaker 1: the issue was that ARM itself was seeing its value
Speaker 1: inflated well beyond the company's own earnings. In before the
Speaker 1: dot com crash, the value of the company was more
Speaker 1: than three hundred times what it was earning. But even
Speaker 1: after the crash, ARM was still hitting targets, but its
Speaker 1: value was plummeting because the market was readjusting. The world
Speaker 1: went into a recession, and that recession affected ARM just
Speaker 1: as it was affecting other companies, and it was, according
Speaker 1: to some employees at the time, a pretty rough time
Speaker 1: to be working for ARM. To be fair, it was
Speaker 1: a pretty tough time to be working just about everybody
Speaker 1: around this time. Robin Saxby, the CEO who had sort
Speaker 1: of guided ARM into the intellectual property phase of its existence,
Speaker 1: transitioned into the role of chairman of ARM, and David
Speaker 1: Warren Arthur East, better known as just Warren East, came
Speaker 1: in as the new CEO of the company. East had
Speaker 1: previously worked at Texas Instruments until n And joined ARM
Speaker 1: and created a consulting business division within ARM. He then
Speaker 1: rose to the rank of vice president of Business Operations.
Speaker 1: Then later on he became the chief operating Officer or CEO,
Speaker 1: and then he became the CEO, and he would lead
Speaker 1: the company for more than a decade, which included guiding
Speaker 1: ARM not just out of the two thousand one recession,
Speaker 1: but then a subsequent recession in two thousand nine. These
Speaker 1: were enormous recessions. It wasn't like ARM did something wrong.
Speaker 1: It was more that these were global events. And while
Speaker 1: he would move on from ARM in two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't worry so much about him because now he's
Speaker 1: the CEO of Rolls Royce Holdings. So one of the
Speaker 1: things East did in order to try and and re
Speaker 1: center the company after the dot com crash was to
Speaker 1: create five year road maps with a plan on how
Speaker 1: to guide the business beyond just the short term, you know,
Speaker 1: more of a long term look at production and and
Speaker 1: research and development and business plans, which I think is phenomenal. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the business was beginning to change again because in the
Speaker 1: early days, a big part of The work around designing
Speaker 1: processors was getting the individual components to a smaller size
Speaker 1: so that you could fit more of them on a
Speaker 1: single chip without making the chip any bigger. Manajorization was
Speaker 1: really the goal, while at the same time you had
Speaker 1: to keep an eye on stuff like heat management, because
Speaker 1: packing more components closer together usually means that a powered
Speaker 1: processor is going to generate more heat, and heat and
Speaker 1: electronics are not a great pair. And at a certain point,
Speaker 1: the microprocessors were reaching a stage where the need to
Speaker 1: make them more powerful was starting to diminish, at least
Speaker 1: for the time. The microprocessors could be shrunk down to
Speaker 1: a smaller form factor because the components were smaller, but
Speaker 1: there wasn't a need to keep the next generation processors
Speaker 1: at the same size to cram more of them on there.
Speaker 1: In other words, you didn't need to keep the chip
Speaker 1: itself the same size. If your chip measured a centimeter
Speaker 1: square and you were able to shrink down the components,
Speaker 1: but you didn't need to add more components, you could
Speaker 1: make that square smaller. Maybe it's you know, nine tenths
Speaker 1: of a centimeter instead point nine centimeters. Well, companies began
Speaker 1: to take the opportunity to build out software based approaches
Speaker 1: to chips and build out what are called system on
Speaker 1: a chip or s OC solutions, and that really made
Speaker 1: it useful to have these very very tiny microprocessors as
Speaker 1: part of it. A system on a chip, by the way,
Speaker 1: is an integrated circuit that creates an entire system on
Speaker 1: a single chip, and that includes stuff like a central
Speaker 1: processing unit UH, internal memory, input and output ports, and more.
Speaker 1: The system on a chip approach cuts down energy consumption,
Speaker 1: it can add more capabilities to smaller devices that don't
Speaker 1: have the physical space to fit multiple chips. So the
Speaker 1: system on a chip approach is what would ultimately allow
Speaker 1: for the evolution of something like smartphones and other small
Speaker 1: computational devices. Many companies interested in developing system on a
Speaker 1: chip systems for various devices from communication systems to AI
Speaker 1: platforms look to ARM processors to provide the low power,
Speaker 1: high efficiency processing part of that system. So again, it
Speaker 1: wasn't that ARM was creating systems on a chip, but
Speaker 1: rather the designs of ARMS micro architecture was an important
Speaker 1: part of the system on a chip that was made
Speaker 1: by these other companies. ARM Holdings have been releasing new
Speaker 1: micro architectures pretty frequently leading up to the dot com crash,
Speaker 1: But after ARMED ten, which released in late it would
Speaker 1: be nearly four years before the next generation of processor
Speaker 1: designs would emerge from ARM. ARM eleven would launch in
Speaker 1: April two thousand two. This family of processors didn't come
Speaker 1: out of the Cambridge office. This one actually originated in
Speaker 1: a French office at Sophia Antipolis, where ARM had expanded.
Speaker 1: At this stage, a lot of the optimization was centering
Speaker 1: around playing media files efficiently as MP three players. You know,
Speaker 1: most notably the iPod were becoming popular. These devices needed small,
Speaker 1: powerful and efficient processors to avoid problems like overheating or delays.
Speaker 1: You know, no one wants a super hot electronic gadget
Speaker 1: burning a hole in their pocket or have the experience
Speaker 1: of navigating a menu in an iPod or similar device
Speaker 1: and then having to wait for the device to catch up.
Speaker 1: In two thousand five, ARM would make a really big change.
Speaker 1: The company recognized that in order to continue to grow
Speaker 1: and to succeed, it needed to diversify beyond just making
Speaker 1: smaller and more powerful processors. The ARM eleven family would
Speaker 1: be the last group of ARM microprocessors using that particular
Speaker 1: simple numbering system. The company changed gears and introduced a
Speaker 1: new classification, several new classifications of processors under different lines
Speaker 1: called Cortex. So you had Cortex A, and Cortex A
Speaker 1: was a continuation of the chain that had left off
Speaker 1: with ARM eleven. So you could think of the first
Speaker 1: generation of Cortex A almost like it's ARMED twelve, because
Speaker 1: that's it was a continuation of that process. But there
Speaker 1: was also Cortex ARE. These were processors that ARM had
Speaker 1: optimized for real time applications, so in other words, for
Speaker 1: applications that needed super fast responsiveness and really low latency
Speaker 1: but not necessarily super powerful processing power. Then there was
Speaker 1: Cortex M still is actually there is Cortex M. That's
Speaker 1: a family of processors that use very little power and
Speaker 1: are inexpensive, and those are mostly meant for embedded technologies.
Speaker 1: And this was right around two thousand five, and to me,
Speaker 1: that is incredible. ARM Holdings recognized a trend before a
Speaker 1: lot of other companies and people did, and that that
Speaker 1: was gonna be a real need for lightweight processors that
Speaker 1: could run on very little power on all sorts of
Speaker 1: electronic devices. So ARM Holdings anticipated the Internet of Things era,
Speaker 1: and this was two years before we even got the
Speaker 1: first iPhone, So by focusing on these three major strategies,
Speaker 1: the company could continue to succeed in markets like mobile
Speaker 1: while expanding its offerings to new opportunities like bettable technologies.
Speaker 1: By two thousand and eight, the demands of technology required
Speaker 1: ARM to innovate even more. The iPhone launch was, as
Speaker 1: we all know, a phenomenal success, kind of understating it.
Speaker 1: More smartphones would follow, with Google Android entering the fray
Speaker 1: and Microsoft doing its best as well. Microsoft wouldn't work out,
Speaker 1: but Google's certainly did. But smartphones are quite demanding devices.
Speaker 1: Sophisticated apps need a decent processor, and the small form
Speaker 1: factor of a smartphone means that battery life is a
Speaker 1: premium as well. To meet the increasing demands of smartphones,
Speaker 1: ARM Holdings created its first multi core processor, the Cortex
Speaker 1: A nine MP core. It's a good idea to run
Speaker 1: over what multi core processors are and what they are
Speaker 1: good at doing. These are processors that have at least
Speaker 1: two separate processing units, and each of those units is
Speaker 1: capable of reading an exit uting program instructions on its own.
Speaker 1: The effect is the same as if you had a
Speaker 1: device that had multiple CPUs, you might sacrifice a bit
Speaker 1: of processing speed per core. For example, let's say I
Speaker 1: design a single core processor and it can run at
Speaker 1: three point five giga hurts, but then my multi core
Speaker 1: processor version I have is limited to three point two
Speaker 1: giga hurts. Now, remember when we're talking about processing speed,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the number of pulses the CPU generates
Speaker 1: in order to carry out instructions. And a giga hurts
Speaker 1: is one billion pulses per second. So the single core
Speaker 1: on its own is faster than either of the two
Speaker 1: multi cores. But the multi cores can work independently and
Speaker 1: thus solve certain problems faster than a single core CPU.
Speaker 1: A multiple core approach is great if you can divide
Speaker 1: the problems that you're working on into parallel tracks, and
Speaker 1: we call this parallel processing. And there's an analogy I
Speaker 1: love to use. Long time listeners of tech stuff know
Speaker 1: what's coming because I use it every time. But the
Speaker 1: analogy involves math students. So let's take two different scenarios,
Speaker 1: and in each scenario, we have a class of five
Speaker 1: math students. One of those students is a true math genius.
Speaker 1: She can solve problems whip fast. Now, The other four
Speaker 1: math students are good math students. They're smart, they perform well,
Speaker 1: but they cannot solve math problems as quickly as our
Speaker 1: genius can. So in our first scenario, these students all
Speaker 1: get the same math quiz, and the quiz has one
Speaker 1: long problem on it with several steps to the problem,
Speaker 1: and each step of the problem is dependent upon the
Speaker 1: answer or the solution from the previous step, so you
Speaker 1: can't skip around because your work completely depends upon the
Speaker 1: stuff that came earlier. In this scenario, our math genius
Speaker 1: would finish first. She's just super efficient at answering each
Speaker 1: step and she can move on to the next one,
Speaker 1: while our other students are still working on the earlier
Speaker 1: parts of the problem. But now let's move to scenario too. Now.
Speaker 1: In this scenario, the teacher has decided to have a
Speaker 1: race just for fun, and the teacher hands out a
Speaker 1: math quiz, and the math quiz has four math problems
Speaker 1: on it. These problems are not related to one another,
Speaker 1: they are completely independent. Our genius has to answer all
Speaker 1: four problems. However, the other four students each get assigned
Speaker 1: one of the four problems, So student one has Problem one.
Speaker 1: Student too has problem too, and so on. The genius
Speaker 1: has to see if she can solve all four of
Speaker 1: the problems on her quiz before the four other students
Speaker 1: each solve their single problem. And in this scenario, we
Speaker 1: would expect the four students to win because even though
Speaker 1: they cannot solve an individual problem as quickly as the
Speaker 1: genius can, they are only working on a single problem each,
Speaker 1: rather than a collection of four problems. That's kind of
Speaker 1: how multi core processors work. If the device is handling
Speaker 1: multiple processes that are independent of each other. A multi
Speaker 1: core processor approach can make things faster and more efficient,
Speaker 1: but not all computational problems fall into the category of
Speaker 1: parallel problems, just as a quick tangent. Parallel problems are
Speaker 1: where quantum computing could potentially make an enormous difference. You've
Speaker 1: heard me talk a lot about bits in these episodes,
Speaker 1: the units of binary information that are either a zero
Speaker 1: or a one. Quantum computing systems use quantum bits or cubits,
Speaker 1: but not cub Bert's that's an arcade game character. Because
Speaker 1: of the properties of quantum mechanics, a cubit can essentially
Speaker 1: be both a zero and a one, and all value
Speaker 1: is in between technically all at the same time, and
Speaker 1: that means a quantum machine can attempt to solve a
Speaker 1: problem in as many ways as are allowed by the
Speaker 1: number of cubits that the system has. So with that approach,
Speaker 1: we can make some pretty drastic changes to our world,
Speaker 1: including the complete elimination of encryption as we know it today.
Speaker 1: But that's getting off topic. I just couldn't resist it.
Speaker 1: So arm creates its first multi core processor, with smartphones
Speaker 1: foremost in mind due to their hefty processing needs. In
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, the company would introduce another innovative approach
Speaker 1: for devices like smartphones. This one was called Big Dot Little.
Speaker 1: And the funny thing is is that big is all
Speaker 1: in lower case and little is all in upper case.
Speaker 1: And that's cute. I mean, it reminds me of tests
Speaker 1: where you know, our friend finds a word that spells
Speaker 1: out one color like the it spells out the word blue,
Speaker 1: but the actual letters are all a different color, like green,
Speaker 1: and then they show it to you really quickly and
Speaker 1: say what color is that? And that's when you decide
Speaker 1: you need new friends. The big Dot Little approach, however,
Speaker 1: was meant to provide processing power on kind of an
Speaker 1: as needed basis. So the idea was, if the device
Speaker 1: launches an application that requires a lot of processing power,
Speaker 1: the primary processor kicks into high gear, but when that
Speaker 1: task is over, it can then shift operations to a
Speaker 1: lower power core, conserving battery power. This lower power core
Speaker 1: doesn't need as much electricity essentially to run, it's just
Speaker 1: running simple processes, possibly in the background, and that way
Speaker 1: it could conserve battery energy. Now, one of the reasons
Speaker 1: companies like arms have to do that is that while
Speaker 1: we see processors advance on a trajectory that more or
Speaker 1: less follows the vision of Moore's law, particularly as we
Speaker 1: start to fudge what Moore's law actually means, not all
Speaker 1: technologies can follow that same trend. Battery technology, for example,
Speaker 1: lags behind. Batteries do get better over time, but ultimately
Speaker 1: they depend upon electrochemical processes, and while we can make
Speaker 1: better design batteries, you can't actually improve physics. You know.
Speaker 1: It's not like we could go to a skate park
Speaker 1: and say, let's make gravity more better here, and then
Speaker 1: we're able to jump higher and there's no risk of
Speaker 1: injury if we fall, because physics and chemistry don't really
Speaker 1: care what our needs are. They just are, and we
Speaker 1: have to work within those limitations as best we can.
Speaker 1: So while we search out better means of storing energy
Speaker 1: to later releases, electricity processor designers have to keep working
Speaker 1: on ways to reduce the demands for electricity in order
Speaker 1: to make batteries last longer. I've got a bit more
Speaker 1: to say about ARM before we wrap things up, but
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break. In the world of PCs,
Speaker 1: Intel is dominant. In March, analysts estimated that Intel processors
Speaker 1: made up eighty one twenty five percent of the market share,
Speaker 1: and rival a m D would take the other eighteen
Speaker 1: point seven five At times a m D s market
Speaker 1: share can top. But Intel is clearly in the lead
Speaker 1: when it comes to processors in PCs. But that is
Speaker 1: in PC land, and Intel just wishes it had the
Speaker 1: market position that ARM has when it comes to mobile devices.
Speaker 1: See in mobile ARM has more than five percent of
Speaker 1: the market share when it comes to devices running on
Speaker 1: ARM designed processors. Like the mobile devices out there are
Speaker 1: on an ARM designed processor at some point in their
Speaker 1: in their architecture, even if it's a small part of it.
Speaker 1: The other five percent are the only ones that are not.
Speaker 1: So keep in mind. Again, these processors are not manufactured
Speaker 1: by ARM. ARM remains a fabulous processor designer, so it
Speaker 1: does not fabricate hardware. The company designs the architecture and
Speaker 1: then license it out to these companies, So companies like
Speaker 1: Qualcom and Samsung and hundreds of others do this. If
Speaker 1: you've heard of snap Dragon chips, those include ARM processor
Speaker 1: designed cores. Samsung's ex and Nose, which was formerly known
Speaker 1: as Hummingbird, also has ARM designed processing cores. Even Apple,
Speaker 1: with its A nine system on a chip, had ARMED
Speaker 1: design processing cores, So companies can also synthesize the ARM
Speaker 1: design into their specific system on a chip architecture. So
Speaker 1: it's not like all of these are idea knuckle to
Speaker 1: one another. They are very different to one another, but
Speaker 1: at their heart is this ARM designed technology. I should
Speaker 1: point out, however, that with more recent Apple chips like
Speaker 1: the A twelve Z bionic chip from Apple, UH that
Speaker 1: one uses an instruction set licensed by ARM, but Apple
Speaker 1: is actually responsible for the actual design of the processor itself,
Speaker 1: so in that case, the micro architecture isn't dependent upon
Speaker 1: a hardware design from ARM, just the instruction set that
Speaker 1: runs on the hardware is from arm Apple engineers designed
Speaker 1: the actual chip in that case. Meanwhile, as the company
Speaker 1: ARM Holdings secured its near monopoly on processor designs in
Speaker 1: the mobile space, it also became more attractive to bigger fish.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and sixteen, one such big fish came
Speaker 1: a chomping at ARM. This one was soft Bank, which
Speaker 1: in July anounced its plan to acquire arm for twenty
Speaker 1: three point four billion pounds, which at the time was
Speaker 1: equal to about thirty one point four billion dollars a
Speaker 1: princely some Indeed, from announcement to completion, the process took
Speaker 1: less than two months, and in the world of large acquisitions,
Speaker 1: that's pretty darned fast. Soft Bank is a conglomerate based
Speaker 1: in Japan, and the company owns a steak in lots
Speaker 1: of other companies, particularly in the tech and energy sectors,
Speaker 1: as well as the financial sector. So, for example, among
Speaker 1: its other subsidiaries are Boston Dynamics, you know, the robot company, Sprint,
Speaker 1: various Japanese branches of companies such as Yahoo or Ali Baba,
Speaker 1: not that it owns the whole company, but rather it
Speaker 1: has a stake in the Japanese branch of those companies.
Speaker 1: The price of that acquisition surprised some people because you know,
Speaker 1: while ARM was in a really secure spot, the annual
Speaker 1: venue for the company was just a fraction of that
Speaker 1: acquisition price. In ARM made about one point five billion
Speaker 1: with a B dollars in revenue, and that is a
Speaker 1: princely some, no doubt about it. But revenue is not profit.
Speaker 1: You still have to subtract all expenses from that number
Speaker 1: before you can start talking about profit. However, the expansion
Speaker 1: of the Internet of Things and the proliferation of more
Speaker 1: devices and need of processors everything from thermostats to VR headsets,
Speaker 1: meant that acquiring the company was a good way to
Speaker 1: plan for the future. In two thousand nineteen, ARM announced
Speaker 1: it had signed a partnership agreement with DARPA, that is,
Speaker 1: the R and D branch of the U. S Department
Speaker 1: of Defense. Typically, DARPA doesn't do a lot of the
Speaker 1: hands on work in developing technologies. The agency tends to
Speaker 1: create contract opportunities and other companies and research organizations do
Speaker 1: the actual groundwork. So DARPA will define a goal or
Speaker 1: a challenge and then offer up contracts to fund companies
Speaker 1: that want to try and meet that goal or challenge.
Speaker 1: But in this case, Pentagon research teams are getting access
Speaker 1: to ARMS, deep knowledge and expertise on low power, high
Speaker 1: efficiency processors for research purposes. One more recent development includes
Speaker 1: a few newer processor lines joining the Cortex family. UH.
Speaker 1: In addition to Cortex, there's also ethos In and ethos you.
Speaker 1: These are intended to work in systems that relate to
Speaker 1: machine learning and artificial neural networks. UH. There's also the
Speaker 1: neo Verse, which launched in twenty eighteen, that aims at
Speaker 1: computer servers and data centers. And then there's secure Core.
Speaker 1: These are processors that are meant to work with stuff
Speaker 1: like smart cards and embedded security systems. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: soft Bank is standing to make a tidy little profit
Speaker 1: by selling ARM holdings to another big fish, this time
Speaker 1: in Vidia, which is best known for its graphics cards
Speaker 1: and video, announced its intention to buy ARM from soft
Speaker 1: Bank on September twenty. This deal is valued at forty
Speaker 1: billion dollars, so nearly nine billion more than what soft
Speaker 1: Bank paid back in I think, even if we adjust
Speaker 1: for inflation, soft Bank is making while it's making bank
Speaker 1: on this deal. So what is actually going on here? Well,
Speaker 1: it's actually really astounding to me. So, according to in
Speaker 1: Vidia's CEO Jensen Huang, the plan is not to change
Speaker 1: the way ARM does things because that would endanger all
Speaker 1: those business partnerships that the company has formed over the
Speaker 1: course of its history. It considers the various companies it licenses,
Speaker 1: it's i P two partners. So instead of messing with that,
Speaker 1: Wong says he wants in Video to kind of follow
Speaker 1: in ARMS footsteps, making in Vidio gpu tech anology and
Speaker 1: add on to ARMS i P. So companies that license
Speaker 1: with ARM could potentially licensed in Vidio gpu tech. So
Speaker 1: in other words, if I'm understanding this announcement correctly, and
Speaker 1: it's it's entirely possible, I'm not. But it sounds like
Speaker 1: in Nvidia is opening up the chance for other companies,
Speaker 1: like fabrication companies to take Vidio designed graphics processing units
Speaker 1: and make their own versions of it, which actually sounds
Speaker 1: a bit crazy to me. I mean, in Vidio partners
Speaker 1: with fabricators in order to actually make their graphics cards.
Speaker 1: They do that, you know, they design their graphics cards
Speaker 1: based on the capabilities of the fabricators they work with,
Speaker 1: but they actually are the ones behind that whole process, right,
Speaker 1: It's almost like they're their partnerships mean that they get
Speaker 1: to use the fabrication equipment of these other companies. It's
Speaker 1: more complicated than that, but you see where I'm getting at. Anyway,
Speaker 1: what I mean is that Video has more of a
Speaker 1: role in the production of the final product, whereas ARM
Speaker 1: is all about selling or licensing intellectual property to other companies. Now,
Speaker 1: could this mean that in Video as a company is
Speaker 1: ultimately looking to transition out of being part of the
Speaker 1: whole fabrication process and to move into more of a
Speaker 1: design role. I don't know the answer to that. The
Speaker 1: only other alternative I can think of is that in
Speaker 1: Vidia is creating the opportunity for other companies PETE within Video,
Speaker 1: which also seems crazy to me. So I don't know
Speaker 1: the answer to this. At the time of this recording,
Speaker 1: that deal is not done yet, it may not happen.
Speaker 1: Regulatory agencies could potentially end up blocking the move, though
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily likely because in Video and ARM do
Speaker 1: not directly compete with each other, so it's not like
Speaker 1: we're seeing the consolidation of a market here. We're not seeing,
Speaker 1: you know, two competitors in the same market space become
Speaker 1: one single thing. I suspect. I'm going to have to
Speaker 1: do future episodes to follow up on whatever happens next,
Speaker 1: but for now, that is the Arms story. I hope
Speaker 1: you guys enjoyed this pair of episodes. UM, I'm starting
Speaker 1: to lose my voice, but I have to record one
Speaker 1: more episode after this, so I can't wait to hear
Speaker 1: what that sounds like. Right, guys, If you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics I should tackle in future episodes, send
Speaker 1: me a message. You can get in touch with me
Speaker 1: on Twitter. The handle is text stuff h s W
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.