The history of ARM started in 1983, when a company named Acorn Computers was looking for

a 1 !"it microprocessor for their ne#t desktop machine$ They %uickly disco&ered that e#isting
commercial microprocessors did not satisfy their re%uirements$ These processors were slower
than standard memory parts a&aila"le at the time$ They had comple# instruction sets that
included instructionstaking hundreds of cycles to e#ecute, leading to high interrupt latencies$
The reason for these de'ciencies was that early integrated microprocessors were modelled after
processors of minicomputers, which consisted of many chips, were dri&en "y microcode and
had &ery comple# instruction sets$ Therefore, Acorn engineers considered designing their own
microprocessor$(owe&er, resources re%uired for such a pro)ect were well "eyond what the
company could a*ord$ +n early 8 -s, microprocessor architectures "ecame so comple# that it
took many years e&en for large companies with signi'cant e#pertise in the area to design a new
processor$.ortunately, )ust two years "efore this, the /erkeley R+0C 1 pro)ect had shown thatit
had actually "een possi"le to "uild a &ery simple processor with performance compara"le to the
most ad&anced C+0C processors of the time$Acorn decided to pick up the /erkeley approach,
and two years later, in 198 , they released their 'rst 2 !"it Acorn R+0C Machine ARM4
processor, which also "ecame the 'rst commercial R+0C processor in the world$ +t used less
than 2 , transistors 5 a &ery small num"er e&en for 198 , "ut still performed
compara"ly to or e&en outperformed the +ntel 8 28 processor that came out at a"out the
same time$ This 'rst ARM architecture is now referred to as the ARM &ersion 1 architecture$ +t
was followed "y the second processor in 1986$ The main new feature introduced in ARM
&ersion 2 was coprocessor support$7ater, the ARM &2 architecture was implemented with
on!chip cache in the ARM3 processor$ +n 199 Apple made a strategic decision to use an
ARM processorin their ewton :A$ A )oint &enture was co!founded "y Acorn and Apple to
designa new processor$ The company was called ARM, standing for Ad&anced R+0C Machines$
The third &ersion of the ARM architecture was de&eloped "y this company and featured 32!"it
addressing, MM; support and <!"it multiply!accumulate instructions$ +t was implemented in
ARM and ARM 6 cores$ The release of these processors and the Apple ewton :A in 1992
marked ARM-s mo&e to the em"edded market$ The <th generation of ARM cores came out in
199 $ The main inno&ation inthis &ersion of the architecture was support for Thum" 1 !"it
compressed instruction set$ Thum" code takes < = less space compared to regular 32!"it
ARMcode "ut is slightly less e>cient$ The most prominent representati&e of the <th generation
of ARM-s is the ARM6T:M+ core, which still remains the most popular ARM product, in
particular, it is used in most Apple i od players, including the &ideo i od$ Curiously,
ARM6T:M+ is "ased on essentially the same 3!stage pipelineas the &ery 'rst ARM designed in
198 , and contains only 3 transistors