Also known as: ARM, AArch64

ARM is a family of RISC instruction set architectures licensed by Arm Holdings, known above all for power efficiency.¹

Overview

ARM follows the RISC philosophy of a small set of simple, fixed-length instructions, which keeps chips lean and power-thrifty. Arm Holdings designs the architecture and core blueprints but does not make chips itself; instead it licenses them to companies that build their own SoCs around ARM cores. The 64-bit variant is AArch64. This licensing model put ARM cores in nearly every smartphone, in countless embedded devices, and increasingly in laptops and servers.

Where it fits

ARM’s efficiency made it the default for battery-powered and embedded computing, the opposite end of the spectrum from where x86 grew up; RISC-V is a newer open RISC rival. The Raspberry Pi and most single-board computers use ARM CPUs, which is exactly why a low-power GopherTrunk capture node by the antenna usually runs on ARM rather than x86.

Sources

1. ARM architecture family — Wikipedia, on ARM, its RISC design, and licensing model. ↩

See also

• Instruction set architecture (ISA)
• x86
• RISC-V
• Central processing unit (CPU)
• Raspberry Pi
• Semiconductor