Acorn, Apple and VLSI form the chip designer that became Arm
In November 1990 a dozen Acorn engineers in a Cambridgeshire barn started a company that would license processor designs to chipmakers. Arm says its designs have since shipped in more than 350 billion chips
- Incorporated: 12 November 1990, as Widelogic Limited
- Named Advanced RISC Machines Limited: 3 December 1990
- Founding team: 12 engineers from Acorn
- Renamed Arm Limited: 21 May 1998
- Registered office today: Fulbourn Road, Cambridge
Licensing designs instead of making chips split processor design from manufacturing. Rival chipmakers could build on the same architecture and compete on their own silicon, so the phones, cars and embedded devices a business buys from different suppliers can share Arm’s designs with Arm paid a royalty on each chip.
“This partnership approach was key to our model of shared success: we only made money if our partners made money.”Dipesh Patel, chief technology officer, Arm, writing for the company’s 30th anniversary in December 2020
Acorn Computers, Apple Computer and VLSI Technology set up Advanced RISC Machines as a joint venture in November 1990 to take the RISC processor that Acorn’s engineers had designed and develop it as a business of its own.
According to Arm’s own account, Apple put in the cash, VLSI the design tools and Acorn the engineers. Apple wanted to use the technology but, that account says, did not want to base a product on intellectual property owned by Acorn, which it saw as a competitor. The new company started out in an old turkey barn in Cambridgeshire.
Licenses and royalties
Apple’s Newton launched on Arm’s architecture in 1993 and was not a commercial success, according to Arm’s official history. Robin Saxby, who had joined in 1991 as the first chairman and chief executive, introduced the model the company was built on: semiconductor companies paid an upfront fee to license Arm’s processor designs, then a royalty on the silicon they produced.
In 1993 Arm also signed a deal with Texas Instruments, and its designs later went into Nokia’s GSM phones. The Arm-powered Nokia 6110 was a hit, and the Arm7 became the company’s flagship mobile design.
Arm now has more than 1,000 partners and more than 9,000 employees, according to its history, which says more than 99% of the world’s smartphones are Arm-based.
Sources
- Companies House, ARM Limited (company number 02557590), company overview and previous company names, accessed 21 October 2026. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02557590
- Arm, “The Official History of Arm”, Arm Newsroom, 24 March 2026. https://newsroom.arm.com/blog/arm-official-history
- Arm, “Arm at 30: A Story of Patience, Focus and Vision”, Arm Newsroom, 11 December 2020. https://newsroom.arm.com/blog/arm-30-years
- Ben Walshe, “A Brief History of Arm: Part 1”, Arm Community blog, 21 April 2015. https://developer.arm.com/community/arm-community-blogs/b/architectures-and-processors-blog/posts/a-brief-history-of-arm-part-1
