More ARMs than arms: From Sunk to Silicon Supremacy

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• Dave Jaggar
• Tuesday 03 June 2025, 11:00-12:00
• SS03, Computer Laboratory, William Gates Building.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Timothy M Jones.

Every second, over a thousand ARM microprocessors are manufactured; in total, more than 320 billion have been shipped – far exceeding the estimated 120 billion humans who have ever lived. Given that most people have two arms and now carry around 40 ARMs, this is a no-contest “arms race” won by silicon. A pivotal factor in that success was an instruction set called Thumb, “the really useful bit on the end of your ARM .” Conceived 30 years ago on a train to a Japanese ski resort – following a disastrous meeting with Nintendo – Thumb was born of both necessity and audacity. Three weeks later, it was hastily presented to Nokia in a last-ditch 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 phone. The design rejected ARM ’s heritage as a CPU for computers and instead targeted the power- and cost-sensitive embedded space – a gamble that ultimately 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.

Biography:

Dave 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 and introducing Thumb, a second instruction set that enabled ARM ’s widespread adoption in low-power, high-volume devices. Jaggar also pioneered on-chip debug support, restructured the architecture to support full operating systems, and created a new floating-point instruction set. As the founding director of the ARM Austin Design Center, he helped expand the company’s global technical footprint. He holds 29 US patents and is co-recipient of the 2019 IEEE /RSE James Clerk Maxwell Medal for groundbreaking contributions to computer architecture.

This talk is part of the Computer Laboratory Computer Architecture Group Meeting series.

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