On ARM, Windows, and semis industry

This is the first of a series I intend to do on semiconductors industry. The purpose is to educate myself on a number of key trends this year in the semiconductor space and their historical roots.

What is ARM?

• ARM stands for many things. It can be the company behind ARM architecture, the ARM architecture itself, or ARM chips produced by one of the many licensees of the ARM architecture. Here are the answers to the first two questions, and the third question is very relevant to development of Windows on ARM and Microsoft’s future. 
• ARM Holdings, according to its own words, is a British semiconductor intellectual property supplier founded in 1990. In layman’s terms, the company designs a basic structure of computer chips then sells the designs to other companies who make actual computer chips. Here are two things to be noted, one is that ARM does not manufacture computer chips like Intel does; two is that the chip designs from ARM Holdings largely determined the kind of devices (hardware) and operating systems (software) the resulting chips work with.
• Due to its business model, ARM’s name does not appear on devices (as opposed to “Intel Inside” label). Therefore it is far lesser known than Intel. However, ARM architecture chips have universal presence in the world of consumer electronics, most notably, Smartphones (almost 100% market share!). The main reason for its dominance in the smartphone space is its low power consumption, which translates directly to longer battery life and better user experience.
• ARM architecture, is a 32-bit instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. An instruction set, simply put, defines how computer “compute”. It affects both hardware and software design of an electronic device. Another common instruction set is x86, which is the foundation for most Intel and AMD CPUs. ARM architecture, those lesser known, is much more prevalent in our daily lives because it is used in phones, tablets, cameras, media players, GPS, cars, telecom equipments, and many many more.

What is the difference between Intel and ARM Holdings?

• Intel has actual factories (called “fab”, short for “fabrication plant”) manufacturing chips only for itself. ARM Holdings license its technologies to other semiconductor companies who make their own chips. For example, most tablets and smartphones today have Nividia’s Tegra (Samsung Galaxy Tab, Moto Droid X2), ST-Ericsson’s NovaThor (Nokia’s windows phones), Qualcomm’s Snapdragon (HTC Evo 4G, Samsung Galaxy SII), Texas Instruments’ OMAP (Barnes & Noble Nook Color, Nokia N9) , Samsung’s Hummingbird (Samsung Galaxy S), or Apple’s A5 (iPhone 4S).

What is Windows on ARM (“WOA”)?

According to Steven Sinofsky, the President of the Windows Division at Microsoft, WOA is “a new member of the Windows family that builds on the foundation of Windows, has a very high degree of commonality and very significant shared code with Windows 8.” Also according to Steven, WOA was “created to enable a new class of PC with unique capabilities and form factors, supported by a new set of partners that expand the ecosystem of which Windows is part.”