What kind of processor architecture is ARM architecture?

Click on the blue words , Pay attention to our

What is? ARM？

ARM（Advanced RISC Machines） It has many meanings in the industry , First ARM Is the abbreviation of a company , secondly ARM A generic term for a series of processors , meanwhile ARM It is also a reduced instruction set architecture .

ARM R & D history of

ARM The development history of can be traced back to 1978 year , Chris · garage （Chris Currry） The company in which he works is in financial crisis , Development goes from bad to worse , After in-depth communication with the founder , Decide to leave . At that time, Currie was very interested in microcomputers , Then he and his friend Herman · Hauser （Hermann Hauser） Created the Cambridge processor (Cambridge Processor Unit) Co., LTD. .1979 year , Cambridge processor company was renamed acorn computer （Acorn Computer） Co., LTD. , It is said that the reason for changing the name is that the company's name is expected to rank first in Apple's alphabetical order , At the initial stage of establishment, the company was mainly engaged in the business of electronic equipment design and manufacturing , Its first successful product was 1981 year 12 May push for the BBC microcomputer .1985 Year is an important milestone for acorn computer , They did it on their own 32 Design of bit microprocessor , Adopt reduced instruction set ,3 Micron process , contain 25000 A transistor . This processor is ARM The starting point of the architecture , namely ARMv1.

1990 year , from VLSI Technology companies invest , Acorns and apples each hold 43% Shares of , Set up the ARM, thereafter ARM became Advanced RISC Machines Abbreviation . The original ARM There are only a few engineers , The workshop is located in a barn in Cambridge .

1996 year ,ARM And Texas Instruments 、 samsung 、 Nokia and other companies establish cooperation , Make a profit . nokia 6110 Classic mobile games —— snake , Is based on ARM 7TDMI Chip development .1998 year ,ARM Listed on NASDAQ , Listing , That time ARM The market value has reached one billion dollars ！2004 year ,ARM Released Cortex-A,R,M Three series of processors , Careful readers may have found out , These three series of processors , Namely ARM Three letters of .2007 year 2 month ,ARM The first paragraph GPU——Mali-200 Officially go to the market , Same year , There is another big event in the scientific and technological circles , That's it iPhone The birth of ！iPhone It is an electronic product with epoch-making significance , Which is based on ARM The core chip , With the advent of the era of smart phones ,ARM Also a new force ,2007 year , be based on ARM The shipment volume of core designed chips has reached 10billion ！

2016 year ARM Acquired by Softbank of Japan ,2020 year , Softbank intends to 400 A hundred million dollars will be ARM To NVIDIA , But in the end, many regulators objected , The deal was aborted ,ARM Will remain neutral in the semiconductor world , Continue to provide... To other chip design companies IP（Intellectual Property） to grant authorization .

ARM Application fields of

ARM Our chip products have a wide range of applications ,Cortex Series of processors and Mali GPU Mainly used in consumer electronics 、 Industrial control system 、 Automotive electronics and other fields ;Neoverse Series chips are mainly used for cloud computing 、 Edge computing, etc ;Ethos NPU With its powerful efficiency ratio , It is widely used in the field of machine learning ;ARM The system of IP, Include AMBA Bus 、Corelink Internet technology , It is widely used in the industry .ARM A strong business map in the chip industry , Let it have and X86 The strength of the camp to compete .

ARM Cortex Three series CPU The features and applications of the series are shown in the figure 2-5 Shown , among A（Application Processors） The main feature of the series is high performance , Its design features high clock frequency 、 deep pipelining 、 Support NEON Instruction set extension , It can improve the performance of the chip in multimedia tasks . Widely used in smart phones , The tablet 、 Wearable device 、 Smart home appliances 、 High performance computing and other fields .R（Real-time Processors） The main feature of the series is fast response , The design features high clock frequency 、 Deep pipeline , Low interrupt delay , Mainly used in automotive electronics 、 Industrial microcontroller 、 Hard disk controller and other fields .M（Microcontroller Processors） The main feature of the series is low power consumption , The assembly line is shallow , Mainly used in Microcontrollers 、 Embedded system 、IoT Other fields .

summary

In the post smartphone era ,ARM The rapid development , And in more than 10 years of time to establish a good ecological , Even Microsoft, an old partner of Intel , Also in the 2011 Announced support for AMR framework . end 2022 year ,ARM Our partners have exceeded 1000 home ,95% All smartphones are based on ARM The core processor , The cumulative shipment of processors exceeds 2250 Million star . Need to know , If in 2000 About years ago , If someone says ARM The performance of the architecture processor can be compared with x86 comparable , Even beyond x86, That would be tantamount to Arabian Nights . And then at the end of the new month ,ARM Riding the big ship of mobile Internet , It has gradually developed into a new force in the field of instruction set architecture ！