ARM history

In an earlier venture, Hermann Hauser had also created the Cambridge Processor Unit or CPU. While at Motorola, Robin Saxby supplied chips to Hermann at CPU. Robin was interviewed and offered the job as CEO around 1991.

In 1993 the Apple Newton was launched on Arm architecture.

The Arm7 became the flagship mobile design for Arm and has since been used by over 165 licensees and has produced over 10 Billion chips since 1994.

By the end of 1997, ARM had grown to become a £27m business with a net income of £3m and so it was time to float the company.

On April 17th, 1998, ARM completed a joint listing on the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq with an IPO at £5.75.

The Arm logo used until IPO in 1999.

In 2001 the ARM926EJ-S was announced.

2005: Cortex The subsequent development of ARM9 and ARM11 families had extended the capability of the ARM architecture in the direction of higher performance with the introduction of multi-processing, SIMD multimedia instructions, DSP capability, Java acceleration etc.

But one of its most notable acquisitions occured in 2006 when ARM acquired Norwegian company Falanx Microsystems AS for £13.4mn.

2008: Multicore By 2008 the Smartphone market was booming and the demand for increased performance whist at the same time maintaining a long battery life presented quite a challenge.

In 2009 ARM launched Cortex-M0, a 32-bit processor in the embedded computing market, which went on to become the fastest licensing ARM processor with 15 licensees signed in nine months.

In his 2011 interview with Engadget, ARM cofounder John Biggs noted battery life was not a focus of RISC when they first started building.

As The Register noted in 2012, system developers Steve Furber and Sophie Wilson worked against an impossible deadline, having the machine ready to go just minutes before the BBC reviewed the product.

On November 19 2015, ARM, along with Cisco Systems, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, and Princeton University, founded the OpenFog Consortium, to promote interests and development in fog computing.

Japanese telecommunications company SoftBank Group made an agreed offer for ARM on 18 July 2016, subject to approval by ARM's shareholders, valuing the company at £23.4 billion (US$32 billion). The transaction was completed on 5 September 2016.

On 1 August 2017, the styling and logo were changed.

Softbank Group sold more than half of Arm China in 2018 to a local consortium consisting of various parties including China Investment Corp. and the Silk Road Fund, effectively relinquishing the majority ownership of the Chinese subsidiary to a group of investors who have ties to Beijing.

How an Nvidia/ARM deal could create the dominant ecosystem for the next computer eraSeptember 4, 2020

As of September 2021, despite Arm's denial, some reports observed that the chief executive the British parent had tried to dismiss publicly declared the "independence" of Arm China.