The following is a review of the "ARM - an introduction to its Business Model and IP creation process" Event held on Thursday 5th October 2017 at UTC Reading

The speaker was  Jon Black Principal Engineer

Jon presented an excellent lecture on the history of Arm from the early days of the Acorn Archimides through to the large range of devices sold in the present day.  The figures presented showed just what ARM have achieved over its 25 year life.  In 2016 17 billion devices were shipped worldwide, ranging from ultra small low powered devices for the IoT (Internet of Things) market through to large scale clusters of processors used for server type applications.  In their 25 year history, 100 billion devices have been shipped by their many business partners.

Jon explained ARM’s business model is very different from the norm.  Arm does not manufacture anything.  They work with a large range of business partners who license the Arm IP (Intellectual Property) and incorporate the silicon and software into their own systems, or sell hardware devices incorporating the IP.  ARM has no customers, only partners, because the success of the company depends on the partner’s success.

Jon leads the teams developing the software support tools used by their partners.  Because there is no physical entity until a partner produces silicon, all designs must be emulated and tested which is why there is a large group within Arm producing all the software tools required.  Jon presented some high-level slides showing the architecture of the hardware and the software tools used.  Some members of the audience were Arm users and some high-level questions were asked of Jon.

The UTC students attending were only aged 14 but were very interested in Arm as a possible employer.  They were aware of the public face of Arm (Raspberry Pi etc) and asked some technical questions.

The talk over-ran due to the many questions asked during the talk and Jon had to cut short his presentation because of the time constraints.

Overall an excellent talk well appreciated by those present.

Thanks again to Mike Halliday and his team at UTC for hosting the event and for getting some of his students along.