Arm: semiconductor giant powering world’s smartphones

London: Arm, the British semiconductor designer being sold by Japanese group Softbank to US chip company NVIDIA for up to $40 billion, is a technological power in smart phones worldwide.

The British company traces its origins to Acorn Computers, whose BBC Micro machine was the introduction to computing for millions of British schoolchildren in the 1980s.

Arm’s technology has been used in more than 180 billion chips shipped worldwide and is present also in cloud computing, for which demand has soared during the coronavirus pandemic as office staff worked remotely from home.