What is the difference between ARM architecture and the typical architecture in CPUs, and why is it so revolutionary?
In: Engineering
It’s not that revolutionary. It’s been used for various smaller chips for decades now.
However ARM’s business model is to be flexible with working with customers – if the customer wants them to design an entire CPU core, they’ll do that. If the customer just wants access to the ISA, they’ll do that. And varying levels of IP access in between. However, they do not actually sell any chips themselves.
This attracted a lot of mobile chip companies like Qualcomm and Samsung and Apple who wanted an accessible ISA as well as certain levels of IP access. Intel and AMD, the 2 main chipmakers at the time, had very difficult-to-access IP, and their off-the-shelf chips that they sold at the time were not very well suited for mobile applications due to high power consumption and wonky workarounds to maintain backwards compatibility.
Since ARM chips were primarily used for low power stuff like toys and sensors, they were better suited for mobile applications and didn’t have all the wonky workarounds.
Once the major mobile chipmakers were on board, software companies started programming for ARM chips, which makes it harder for non-ARM chips to break into the market since it means that all the software would have to be re-written.
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