Why ARM Owes Apple - Computerphile

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If not for Apple, the company making ARM processors might never have existed and ARM could have disappeared with Acorn. Professor Steve Furber explains why.
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This video was filmed and edited by Sean Riley.
Computer Science at the University of Nottingham: bit.ly/nottscomputer
Computerphile is a sister project to Brady Haran's Numberphile. More at www.bradyharan.com

[@michaelwaters1358]

This aged well

[@SuperSerNiko97]

Watching this after the 2020 WWDC

[@EnUsUserScreenname]

Acorn grew an ARM, but only with the help of an Apple.

[@daringintrovert]

And Newton eat up both, Martha

[@sandwich2473]

Where would we be without competition...

[@danwarb1]

Apple.

[@Snoopod]

What a brilliant, modest man

[@tomtalk24]

That 12 billion into phones and 6 billion somewhere else was quite poignant.

[@utl94]

* Half of 12 billion into phones.

[@esra_erimez]

I just rewatched this video, how can I give it yet another thumbs up? One is hardly enough.

[@SyukriLajin]

sad to think about what happened to Nokia.

[@mattbland2380]

Radius graphics accelerator was for Apple Mac II, rather than the Apple II.

[@whophd]

Correct, this was the big desktop Mac that had lots of slots (NuBus rather than ISA). It was the first big expensive range of colour Macintosh, and relied on discrete graphics to get all those 16,777,216 colours … it was the late 1980s, of course. Meanwhile PCs could barely display a desktop.

[@adamspeight9785]

I think a lot of those 6 billion went into embedded devices. Like harddisc controllers, network modems, settop boxes. Etc.

[@kael13]

Adam Speight Was about to ask where they went. Thanks.

[@techmage89]

Adam Speight Controllers for industrial machinery and vehicles, too.

[@codediporpal]

12 billions ARM chips made in 1 year. Damn, that's more than one for every person on the planet!

[@hjembrentkent6181]

I know right. And you can bet most of these went to the richest 10%. Maybe a dozen chips for every western person sold in a year. None in Africa.

[@pozzitivvemonkkee3082]

ARM owes Apple because Apple couldn't use something without owning half of it.

[@AlexMckillmore]

Damn. I used to have a newton. Doubled as a mirror

[@Seegalgalguntijak]

The Newton MessagePad failed, but it had an ARM. The PalmPilot, which came out a year or so later, didn't fail, but what CPU did it have? I only remember that my first PalmPilots were 16-bit CPUs, and I think something like 8MHz? Which, back in the day, was quite amazing for a pocket device. Nowadays, pocket devices are quicker than what most of us have on our desktops, but that development was only at its very first steps back in the day.

[@SerBallister]

Seegal Galguntijak I'd say pocket devices are nowhere near desktops for processing power.

[@Seegalgalguntijak]

SerBallister Well, my Moto X has more processing power, than my fastest laptop. Of course, because I don't need the newest stuff, and a C2D at 2.26GHz is enough for me, and yes, I could go dual CPU 8-core but there is no need. They are at least somewhere in that same range, while in the 90s, they were several worlds away from each other.

[@SerBallister]

Seegal Galguntijak I was implementing image recognition the other day on a cross built project, so both machines are getting the exact same code. The PC version took something like 5ms per frame to process, this is on a I5 3.2ghz single core. My target machine is a 600mhz embedded ARMv8 core, that takes 750ms per frame, going off just clock speed it should only be 5 times slower.. ARM CPUs are horribly inefficient at some things.

[@Seegalgalguntijak]

SerBallister That may very well be true. But it can also be said for x86 CPUs, or any other platform. They all have their advantages and their weaknesses.

[@SerBallister]

Seegal Galguntijak That's true, I also couldn't use a full blown Intel system for my project because it would have a battery life of about 15 seconds.

[@elchippe]

Look big companies do not like to take "risc"

[@loggjohnable]

12 billion chip damn

[@matsv201]

Well, MIPS was introduces simulations as ARM. By the early 1990 when risc become wide spreed the technology was almost already dead. Looking at processors like 486 some of the classical CISC architectures morphed into something new. By the time the P5 (original Pentium) there was really no point in talking about RISC and CISC any more. By the post P5 period virtually all (desktop) processors was in some degree or other instruction morphing. Introduction of SIMD, Cache, MMX, memory multipliers and so also rendering the old RISC vs CISC argument, or even concept out of date. Most modern CPU contain several pipes (flotingpoint, real, FFT and so on) pipelines. Some run under what is basically a cisc architecture and some run under what is basically a RISC one, this is often mixed in the same processor. Talking about x86 being CISC processors, that is not really true. x86 is a CISC instruction set, but most x86 processors is actually x86/x87/x64 hybrid processors with about 10-15 add on instruction-setts. By the time you introduced desperate instruction setts in the same processor, basically for Intel the 486DX. There is not really a point about talking of CISC or RISC type instruction. True, in a 486DX both pipes is CISC, but they just as well might not be. Also looking at a modern Arm Cortex A57 it have a large array of instruction setts, i don´t really know what classifies as CISC or RISC, but i also believe it don´t really matter. Of cause, in the x86/x64 the core instruction is still i CISC base and the reverse is true for A57. This makes the x86 a little more transistor hungry and the A57 a little more frequency hungry (well, quite a bit more actually). Thats why we see Arm processors that is really high in frequency and consume very little power, but they are also relatively slow. RISC instruction base is really good if you need low computing performance over a set given time with minimum energy demand, like in a phone, you have it on. But its not really that good if you want high compute performance. The issue here is up to about 1Ghz or so, for every increase in frequency you get a equivalent increase in power consumption, but over 1Ghz its closer to for every double in frequency you get 4 times the power draw. This is no real problem in a GPU, you can just ad more render pipes, get double the performance on a optimal frequency. But in a CPU, you don´t really want to paralelizise the task that much, so they are force to push the frequency. This makes a ARM platform really not that good for games or really any power hungry application. The issue here is that most gaming API until just recently could just utilize one CPU core for graphics export to the GPU. Because of that you wanted one really fast one (that's also why Intel CPU is generally better at games than AMD, but AMD is quite good at rendering). But a ARM CPU is really bad at it.. on the other hand, its quite problematic having a x86 processor in a phone, because the base load power is still a bit higher. (the obvious solution is of cause having both like in the PS4, but then you have to have two codes)

[@SerBallister]

matsv201 Intel/AMD cpus are faster for games because they have gigantic data caches, better memory interfaces and excellent floating point performance. CISC vs RISC is an obselete argument these days.

[@matsv201]

SerBallister Well, that is also true, but the main IPC is really whats killes of the ARM in gaming. Actually the memory interface and FPU is not that bad on a A57... its still not in the PC region, but is defently far better than before.

[@lsfornells]

Lol, your comment from 7 years ago didn’t age well. Well, the truth is that once you apply cisc tricks to essentially risc processors, then is when risc shows as vastly superior. For some strange reason this was never done before. However look now at Apple Silicon arm cores. They are AS fast as Intel cores and definitely much much faster per watt, which of course enables for packing a lot more in a single chip. Desktop computers have already switched to arm.

[@JaredReabow]

Hey there brady and CO, could you talk about Trinary computing please

[@monsirto]

Can't wait to see the video on why Apple owes Xerox ; ]

[@rinikaravinthv8490]

They made a deal with Xerox and they didn't steal. Xeror was allowed to invest in 1 million shares of Apple.

[@gavin9715]

@@rinikaravinthv8490 apple is the most evil company. They copied entire FreeBSD open source code into MacOS, AND THEY MADE MACOS CLOSED SOURCE

[@slippydouglas]

Rinik Aravinth V - 1 million shares of Apple in the early days- best investment ever. (If Xerox had hung onto those shares through today, they’d be worth $20.1 billion. Considering Xerox’s market cap is only $3.24 billion, that seems to be a no.)

[@mechaturtles]

The King of Numbers except FreeBSD literally permits this, so I’m not sure how that makes them evil at all. Tons of companies use open-source libraries to create closed-source, commercial products, are they wrong for doing that?

[@gavin9715]

@@mechaturtles At the very least Apple should give credit to the team at FreeBSD (by putting "inspired by FreeBSD" underneath apple logo on boot screen). Also, Apple should financially support/award them (by giving 1% of their market share, $10 Billion) .

[@djole94hns]

Well, thanks... Apple... *cringing horribly*

[@BlueBetaPro]

You git.

[@djole94hns]

BlueBetaPro

[@MinecraftEpicPlayer]

djole94hns Yeah, it's hard to imagine that Apple actually helped the industry. But, it did. Many, many years ago, and it's never helped again since.

[@djole94hns]

***** Apple laptops are well-built, but so are ASUS and Dell. And yet, they cost almost 50% less for the same configuration.

[@Patchuchan]

+djole94hns Apple of the 1990s was a very different company then the one that exists today and actually did innovative things.

[@BegbertBiggs]

By buying the MacBook and iMac in the background they clearly paid that back.

[@charlesanthony6368]

he looks like one of the villains in Dexter.. Jon something.. lol

[@Zhixalom]

Hope you realize that it is the other way around: the entertaintment industry setting up and reinforcing their own stereotypes, mirroring chararacters who stand out in the real world to make it seem more believable... but you are right, he really does.

[@Warrantti]

Wish my laptop had arm processor.

[@hjembrentkent6181]

You don't wanna play games?

[@bonnome2]

Don't most arm cores go into microwaves and similar devices now a days because arm basically took over the entire industry?

[@muppetrowlf1473]

An American idea. Executed to perfection by the British. What a team!

[@casparhughey5651]

Arm dont owe Apple anything. Apple owes everything to everybody

[@Pinefenario]

Watched this on my iPhone with an arm processor inside…

[@mrboyban]

Probably an outdated article. The title should refer to Why Nvidia owes Apple, even though one might find that relevant or not.

[@wautersandreas]

I must say, the lack of context in this video confuses me. What is ARM? what does it stand for? Why is it special?

[@hantuchblau]

As far as I remember: Arm used a risc structure, which stands for reduced instruction set computer. It basically tries to keep the interface between the program and the cpu as low level as possible. This means that every instruction takes exactly one clock cycle and the program itself has to do stuff like loading and storing data. For instance, addition with RISC would be: Load a Load b Add Store a This has some other implications like more work for the compiler, higher but less efficient clock cycles, higher memory requirements because more instructions are needed and lower energy consumption. Especially the last one is quite interesting for stuff like phones or handhelds. The alternative would be cisc, complex instruction set computer. Addition here would be: Add a b It has some fairly complex instructions that take multiple clock cycles and mirror higher level languages format fairly closely. It handles the loads and stores so you only have to deal with memory to memory and can ignore the registers. Nowadays there is usually elements from both but cisc is much stronger. Take the x86 instruction set for instance. That was from memory so take it with a grain of salt but I think it is correct for the most part.

[@laharl2k]

***** actually actual X86 have a risc translator inside that translate all the cisc instructions into risc ones. That's what i heard at leasts. Had something to do with the microcode and how they fix their bugs on the cpu.

[@piranha031091]

wautersandreas It's a type of microprocessor. Nowadays, it is typically used for mobile phones, smartphones, tablets, small onboard computers (like those in cars), etc...

[@cormyat07]

wautersandreas It tends to be a more power-efficient architecture, which is why it's predominant in battery-powered devices.

[@hantuchblau]

Laharl Krichevskoy thought about adding that but mobile hates editing posts, apperently. It allows to use new features without recompiling old software as well but requires basically a jit compiler.

[@andljoy]

It is a shame ARM based desktops/laptops are a very very small part of the market. Who knows , if x86 had not dominated that space we could have had the AcornAir and AcornPro laptops ! with RISC OS 11 !

[@andljoy]

that would be AWSOME!

[@insect212]

Andrew Joy Would arm even be well suited for fire breathing overclocked gaming machines? Cause a computing world without fire breathing over clocked gaming machines would be sad.

[@PhilBoswell]

Brock Jones The ARM might have been made for "over-clocked gaming machines" ^_ I worked with the guy who ported Smalltalk-80 to the Archimedes and he was given an experimental model (something like "Archimedes 5000" but don't quote me on that ;-) on which he tried to run the Flight Simulator. It was an absolute disaster because they hadn't bothered with any timing loops, so it ran as fast as your machine could go, and his went rather faster than normal. On a standard mission IIRC you took off and had about a minute to look around and realise that somebody was firing missiles at you so you could take evasive action. On his machine you clicked whatever made it go, you whooshed along the runway, took off and exploded in a blaze of glory in about 2 seconds flat, if that. So yeah, "over-clocked gaming machines" FTW :-D

[@andljoy]

Indeed you can overclock an ARM no problem . Some of them are little beasts , i abused the one in my raspberry pi something rotten :)

[@humayunkabir4471]

M1 joined the chat

[@GFlCh]

So, "Why does Arm owe Apple"? Do you mean something like Arm owes its success to Apple? Or, is it something to do with "owing money"?

[@MINKIN2]

Yes, ARM owes its success to Apple. As he went on to explain, one they got the Apple contract, other companies wanted to use the ARM chip too. This is not about owing money.

[@rajshah2691]

It was started as a joint venture between apple and acorn so thats why its both american and british,softbank just acts as a holding company.

[@muppetrowlf1473]

Apple we’re definitely the investment with Acorn that accelerated ARM’s growth. They required ARM to be “spun off” from Acorn. Because Acorn at the time was associated as direct competition for Apple. I often suspect it would also been have made easier by the fact that Apple have always had some of the best British computer scientists working in-house

[@cheesybaconstudios]

First!

[@brasstwin]

Yay I'm here early

[@bergweg]

sad to see smart guys playing commercial games

[@danwarb1]

Nobody owes Apple.