Silicon Valley

Henry smiled wryly, went into the bathroom to take a shower, and changed into a suit of clothes.

People tend to think wildly when they are free, so it's better to find something to do...

Last time, Henry asked Qualcomm to come to the UK to acquire the ARM chip design department of Acorn Computer Company. Although Acorn Computer attached great importance to the department, it immediately agreed to the five million pounds offered by Qualcomm.

Now the mainstream is the CISC complex instruction set processor, especially Intel's chips are the most popular!

ARM is based on the RISC reduced instruction set, and the designed chip processor is a niche in the current market, and few companies use it!

However, Acorn Computer's development of RISC is also helpless.

In 1984, Acorn intended to use Motorola's 16-bit chip, but found it too slow and too expensive. A machine that costs £500 cannot use a CPU that costs £100! So they turned to Intel for the design data of the 80286 chip, but they were rejected, so they were forced to develop it themselves.

Subsequently, a RISC simplified instruction set was designed, and the RISC-based processor has relatively simple instructions, so it has low power consumption and low price, and is especially suitable for mobile devices. But in terms of computers, he was stunned, and he couldn't hold his head up because of the suppression by CISC. Therefore, Acorn Computer Company is well-known in the UK at best, and is a second-rate company in the world.

Acorn Computer Company was originally expected to be reorganized in November this year to form ARM! Apple has contacted Acorn Computer Company before, and will invest 1.5 million pounds in ARM when it is officially reorganized to form ARM. The chip maker VLSI will also invest 250,000 pounds, while Acorn itself will invest 1.5 million pounds in intellectual property and Some engineers have invested in shares!

However, Qualcomm has now cut its teeth and invested £5 million, which is £1.75 million more than the valuation of the upcoming ARM company.

At this moment, CISC is like a black fog covering the earth, and the future of ARM is unclear.

Facing the temptation of five million pounds, Acorn Computer Company agreed without much thought!

Acorn Computer's own job is to develop computers. The reason for the development of RISC reduced instruction set computers is mainly because of lack of money. If he had money, he wouldn't use Intel's chips? Most of the world's computer manufacturers are using Intel's chips. Naturally, it makes sense. It must be Intel's chips that are good, so they will use them. Acorn computer company is a poor man, so it will be careful and develop its own RISC reduced instruction set computer. However, the performance is so far worse than CISC that it cannot compete with computers using CISC chip processors!

Therefore, the performance of Acorn Computer Company declined, and even later, it simply gave up research and development of computers, but concentrated on the development of ARM Company. But if Acorn Computer can get a huge sum of money, they have the ability to develop a computer based on the CISC processor. Computers are very hot at the moment, and Acorn Computer will definitely not give up developing computers and keep ARM.

This is a very simple multiple choice question.

So, Acorn Computer finally decided to sell the ARM chip design division to Qualcomm.

Qualcomm bought the ARM chip design department and immediately established the ARM company. When Henry came to ARM, people from Apple happened to be there. Acorn Computer sold ARM to Qualcomm, and Apple's partnership with Acorn Computer moved to Qualcomm.

Apple needs ARM to provide chip design support for its product Newton, which is still in the research and development stage and is the world's first handheld computer (PDA). Apple has high hopes and great ambitions for it. It wants to change the entire personal computer market and break the current predicament of Apple through Newton.

As far as Henry knows, in order to develop Newton, Apple has invited strong foreign aid, and its electronic design and manufacturing are all in Japan by Sharp!

After the successful development of Newton, it has functions such as touch screen, infrared, handwriting input (even supports cursive writing). If it evolves again, it will become an iPad... In fact, this Newton is the prototype of the iPad!

However, the Newton did not sell well at all, and Apple quickly stopped production of the product in desperation. But more than three years of hard work have been burned, and Apple has lost a lot of money, almost on the verge of bankruptcy!

When Henry passed by Apple, he smiled and said to himself, don't be nervous, bro, don't worry, ARM will definitely cooperate with you, hehe...

If you don't cooperate, how can you pit Apple?

Newton is a big hole! ! !

Henry came to the office of the CEO of ARM. The current CEO of ARM is George Moore, the former minister of the ARM division of Acorn Computer Company. This is the first time Henry has met him. I saw that he was tall and thin, with short hair, a high nose bridge, concave eyes, and a somewhat ugly face.

Henry sat down and listened to his report on ARM's situation. ARM has more than 30 employees, of which there are only 12 chip design engineers, but every chip design engineer is a top talent in chip design, especially good at RISC chip architecture design!

At present, ARM's chip design in RISC ranks second, and no one dares to rank first!

In terms of RISC chip design, ARM is the most authoritative company in the world!

In addition, ARM owns many basic patents of RISC. If others want to develop RISC-based chip processors, they must be authorized by ARM!

Patents make Qualcomm, and patents will make ARM! ! !

The most important reason why Henry emphasized the need to acquire ARM is to take a fancy to ARM's patents!

After listening to George Moore's report, Henry nodded and said, At present, although the RISC chip market is sluggish, RISC chips are efficient, fast in response, and low in power consumption. I think RISC will have more development prospects than CISC. Especially in mobile devices, such as mobile phones, RISC is far better than CISC. Although CISC is widely used in the computer field, CISC wins by stacking a lot of complex instructions. Our RISC is a simplified instruction, the quantity It can’t beat CISC for a while. However, the more CISC develops, the more bloated it becomes, the higher the cost will be; and RISC will become more powerful after optimization and improvement, catching up with CISC, but the cost is much lower than CISC!”

Henry paused and said, In the future, chip processors will be dominated by RISC and will be dominated by ARM. I am very sure of this!!!

George Moore was stunned for a while. Although he is the CEO of ARM and is full of confidence in ARM, he does not dare to conclude that ARM will definitely become the chip overlord in the future...

Now, Intel has gradually become a giant in the industry, as if an unattainable mountain is standing in front of ARM! To say that ARM can beat Intel, George Moore has no confidence at all...

Who can remove the fog that blocks the future and see through decades at a glance? Henry is the only one in the world! ! !

Countless smart terminal products such as smart phones and smart watches will basically use the chip design of ARM architecture. In the embedded field, ARM is the king! ! ! When the era of intelligence comes, ARM punches Intel and kicks AMD.

Henry saw that George Moore did not quite believe his words, nor did he explain. If he really believed it, Henry would have to wonder if he also traveled back from the future...