Post by allancaldwell on Nov 1, 2011 6:40:17 GMT
ARM is a popular name familiar to everybody in the technical industry and it is a thirty two bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture developed by ARM holding. Popularly known as the Advanced RISC Machine, it had also been popular in the name Acorn RISC machine. According to experts, the ARM architecture is the most widely used thirty two bit ISA in terms of numbers produced. The first embedded arm based products were the Acorn Archimedes range which was introduced in the year 1987 and it was originally conceived by Acorn Computers for use in its personal computers. The ARM processers are considered to be suitable for low power applications and their relative simplicity is considered to be the reason for this peculiarity. As they are relatively low cost small microprocessors and microcontrollers, ARM processors have become dominant in the mobile and embedded electronics market. According to a survey conducted in 2005, it was found out that about ninety eight percent of the more than one billion mobile phones sold each year used at least one ARM processor. At present, ARM processors are extensively made into use in consumer electronics, including PDAs, mobile phones, digital media and music players, hand held game consoles, calculators and computer peripherals such as hard drives and routers. Also, studies show that presently ARM processors account for approximately ninety percent of all embedded thirty two bit RISC processors. As the name indicates ARM processors are developed by ARM and by ARM licensees. ARM7, ARM9, ARM11 and Cortex are the prominent ARM processor families developed by ARM holdings.