The History of The ARM architecture and why ARM architecture was created.

In the beginning the ARM architecture was specifcally developed for use in a PC- the Acorn Archimedes. In 1987, the Archimedes hit the market, powered by the ARM2 processor with up to 4MB of Ram and a 20MB hard drive.  With only 30,000 transistors (less than half of the Motorola 68000's 68000), the ARM2 processor was one of the simplest 32-bit processors of its time.  This allowed lower transistor count, paired with the efficient reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture, allowed ARM2 to outperform Intel's 80286 while consuming less electricity.  ARM's inherent power efficiency and embedded-system approach made it ideal for mobil devices. toward the end of the 1980's, ARM LTD. partnered with Apple, and the result was the ARM6 architecture, which in the form of the ARM 61, powered the world's first PDA, the Apple Newton.  ARM also licensed the ARM6 architecture DEC, which led to the development of StrongARM in the mid- 1990s.  Its purpose was to provide a faster ARM processor, for high-end, low-power embedded systems, such as set-top boxes and PDAs.  In 1996, the first StrongARM processor, the SA-110 was released.  Capable of speeds up to 200MHz and performing at about 1.0 DMIPS/MHz, it was the fastest available processor for potrable devices throughout the entire year (until the StrongARM SA-1100 came out).  StrongARM became so overwhelmingly popular in mobil devices that Microsoft eventually dropped support for all other architectures in its Pocket PC software.  Shortly thereafter, Intel waas able to purchase intellectual rights to StrongARM and developed the XScale architecture, which still exsists today in many Marvell products.

This initial licensing contract with DEC pushed ARM Ltd. to continue licensing the ARM architecture on a much larger scale. resulting in the widespread proliferation of ARM we see today, from routers and NAS devices to smartphones and MP3 players.  Advancements in ARM processors, such as dedicated graphics chips, multimedia instruction sets, and embedded flash memory, have allowed smartphones to evolve into the high-end multimedia devices they are today.