A firm which produces the fundamental blueprints on which most microprocessor chips are built is not a normal company.

The firm’s core products are a set of fundamental designs for computer chips called instruction-set architectures (ISAS). Arm sells access to ISAS to the likes of Apple, Qualcomm and Huawei, giving those firms freedom to design and manufacture Arm chips.

Arm’s recipes for computer chips—it designs them but does not make any itself—are the most popular on the planet. “We do drawings of engines and we sell those drawings,” says Mike Muller, ARM’s chief technology officer. Yet Mr Muller’s “drawings” are anything but simple.

Arm typically takes eight years for a new design to go from idea to machine code that can be shipped to licencees.
To keep its design pipeline full of viable new ideas, the firm must constantly forecast the computer industry’s direction. To do so it uses its close, ongoing relationships with big customers. It is in constant discussion with firms that make cars, televisions, fitness trackers, drones and other products. As well as Apple, one of its biggest clients, it talks to credit-card companies such as MasterCard as well as to content distribution networks like Netflix and Disney. All are anticipating their computing requirements many years hence and need Arm’s help to build them. This has turned Arm into a sort of information clearing-house for future computing applications.