A little over four decades ago, a small Cambridge computer company had a big problem. Their biggest-selling product used an elderly microprocessor, just as their competitors were moving to more capable ones. However, those processors were stopgaps that would soon be overhauled. So, the company, asked, why not go for a newer generation of microprocessor?

The only problem was that no suitable microprocessor existed. During a trip to a chip-design company in America, they were surprised to discover that the core design team comprised just a handful of people, much smaller than they expected.

In a fit of madness, they started designing their own microprocessor. This was not the easy option. There was very little budget, so they begged, borrowed or stole resources, and wrote much of their own design software. Constraints abounded: the chip had to be simple, had to be low-powered, and had to be cheap. When their company was taken over, they did not tell the new owners about the project’s existence. To many people outside the team, their project was a madness. How could they compete with the leviathans of Intel, Texas Instruments or Motorola?

Forty years ago today, at 3 pm on the 26th April 1985, a switch was not flipped, and the first ARM chip lived. A monster had been created; a monster whose 300 billion descendants surround you. Like many monsters from lore, it eventually ate its creator, but it has been a massive success story for Britain. ARM has a revenue of three billion dollars and employs over 7,000 people around the world, almost half of whom still work near where that first chip was not powered up.

No-one on that team expected their little monster to be such a success. Like many successes, it was a fluke, a random lightning strike: if it had happened a few years earlier, or later; if different design decisions had been made; if the technology had not been spun off at the right time, if the right business model had not been followed …

If, if if …

We should have more companies like ARM. We are still a nation of tinkerers; we have a superb technological base, and great universities such as Cambridge and Hull. We have people with insanely great ideas who want to develop insanely great products. But despite these advantages, we do not seem to produce enough world-beating companies. Everybody wants to rule the world, and we could, at least in some areas.

Britain was the cradle of the industrial revolution. We were at the forefront of the computing revolution, but saw most of the advantages of that drain away to the USA. We can be leaders again, but things will need to change. We need a more open attitude to risk. We need financiers who will look more than two years into the future. We need the infrastructure to take advantage of our natural and human resources. We need governments who are willing to make tough decisions and take financial risks, and a well-educated, well-trained workforce. We need to nurture the talent we have, and need management with vision and the skills to attract talent and finance. We need the courage to allow people to fail and try again.

We have many brilliant people with insanely great ideas. Let’s help them change the world.

We need to make lightning strike not just once, but many times.

To end this piece, I will raise a toast to the team that developed the ARM chip forty years ago. The tiny device they developed changed the world.

Let’s get more Brits changing it again.

I have necessarily simplified the history of the ARM chip. More detail can be found in an excellent ARSTechnica article here

Josias Jessop