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SUMMARY:More ARMs than arms: From Sunk to Silicon Supremacy - Dave Jaggar
DTSTART:20250603T100000Z
DTEND:20250603T110000Z
UID:TALK232756@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Timothy M Jones
DESCRIPTION:Every second\, over a thousand ARM microprocessors are manufac
 tured\; in total\, more than 320 billion have been shipped - far exceeding
  the estimated 120 billion humans who have ever lived. Given that most peo
 ple have two arms and now carry around 40 ARMs\, this is a no-contest “a
 rms race” won by silicon. A pivotal factor in that success was an instru
 ction set called Thumb\, "the really useful bit on the end of your ARM." C
 onceived 30 years ago on a train to a Japanese ski resort - following a di
 sastrous meeting with Nintendo - Thumb was born of both necessity and auda
 city. Three weeks later\, it was hastily presented to Nokia in a last-ditc
 h attempt to convince them that a chip which wouldn't exist for another 12
  months was exactly the one they needed for their next generation mobile p
 hone. The design rejected ARM's heritage as a CPU for computers and instea
 d targeted the power- and cost-sensitive embedded space - a gamble that ul
 timately unlocked the high-volume markets ARM needed to survive. This talk
  explores Thumb’s origins\, its technical design\, and critical role in 
 ARM’s commercial breakthrough\, along with its enduring legacy in today
 ’s ubiquitous\, low-power\, digital world.\n\nBiography:\n\nDave Jaggar 
 joined ARM in 1991 and spent nine years transforming the architecture that
  would become the foundation of modern embedded computing. He authored the
  first ARM Architecture Reference Manual\, formalizing the architecture an
 d introducing Thumb\, a second instruction set that enabled ARM’s widesp
 read adoption in low-power\, high-volume devices. Jaggar also pioneered on
 -chip debug support\, restructured the architecture to support full operat
 ing systems\, and created a new floating-point instruction set. As the fou
 nding director of the ARM Austin Design Center\, he helped expand the comp
 any’s global technical footprint. He holds 29 US patents and is co-recip
 ient of the 2019 IEEE/RSE James Clerk Maxwell Medal for groundbreaking con
 tributions to computer architecture.
LOCATION:SS03\, Computer Laboratory\, William Gates Building
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