Arm

The ARM architecture (previously, the Advanced RISC Machine, and prior to that Acorn RISC Machine) is a 32-bit RISC processor architecture that is widely used in a number of embedded designs. more...

Home
Bath & Body
Dietary Supplements,...
Hair Care
Hair Removal
Health Care
Massage
Medical, Special Needs
Bathroom Safety
Braces, Supports
Hearing Assistance
Incontinence Aids
Mobility Equipment
Monitoring, Testing
Blood Pressure
Arm
Other
Wrist
Diabetes
Accu-Chek
Glucose Monitors
Lancets
Monitoring Kits
OneTouch
Other
Test Strips
Other Monitoring, Testing
Stethoscopes
Thermometers
Orthotics, Insoles
Other
Positioning Equipment
Respiratory Aids
Nail
Natural Therapies
Oral Care
Other Health & Beauty Items
Skin Care
Tattoos, Body Art
Vision Care
Weight Management
Wholesale Lots

Due to their power saving features, ARM CPUs are dominant in the mobile electronics market, where low power consumption is a critical design goal.

Today, the ARM family accounts for over 75% of all 32-bit embedded CPUs, making it one of the most prolific 32-bit architectures in the world. ARM CPUs are found in all corners of consumer electronics, from portable devices (PDAs, mobile phones, media players, handheld gaming units, and calculators) to computer peripherals (hard drives, desktop routers). Important branches in this family include Intel's XScale and the Texas Instruments OMAP series.

History

The ARM design was started in 1983 as a development project at Acorn Computers Ltd.

The team, led by Roger Wilson and Steve Furber, started development of what in some ways resembles an advanced MOS Technology 6502. Acorn had a long line of computers based on the 6502, so a chip that was similar to program could represent a significant advantage for the company.

The team completed development samples called ARM1 by 1985, and the first "real" production systems as ARM2 the following year. The ARM2 featured a 32-bit data bus, a 26-bit address space giving a 64 Mbyte address range and 16, 32-bit registers. One of these registers served as the (word aligned) program counter with its top 6 bits and lowest 2 bits holding the processor status flags. The ARM2 was possibly the simplest useful 32-bit microprocessor in the world, with only 30,000 transistors (compare with Motorola's six-year older 68000 with around 70,000). Much of this simplicity comes from not having microcode (which represents about one-fourth to one-third of the 68000) and, like most CPUs of the day, not including any cache. This simplicity led to its low power usage, while performing better than the Intel 80286. A successor, ARM3, was produced with a 4KB cache which further improved performance.

In the late 1980s Apple Computer started working with Acorn on newer versions of the ARM core. The work was so important that Acorn spun off the design team in 1990 into a new company called Advanced RISC Machines Ltd.. For this reason, ARM is sometimes expanded as Advanced RISC Machine instead of Acorn RISC Machine. Advanced RISC Machines became ARM Ltd when its parent company, ARM Holdings plc, floated on the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ in 1998.

This work would eventually turn into the ARM6. The first models were released in 1991, and Apple used the ARM6-based ARM 610 as the basis for their Apple Newton PDA. In 1994, Acorn used the ARM 610 as the main CPU in their Risc PC computers.

Read more at Wikipedia.org