Most of the consumers are unaware of ARM or never even heard of ARM. You won't see ARM any of ad campaigns in magazines or on TV. There are no stickers or banners proclaiming ‘ARM Inside!’ The company employs less than 1,800 people, and at $3 billion, its market capitalization is a mere fraction of Intel's. But make no mistake that ARM and Intel are on a collision course for future. Intially what happens next could determine the shape of the computing industry for years to come. It won't be easy for Intel being the reigning king of PCs and server CPUs, but in the world of mobile devices, that title goes to an unlikely rival to a small, unassuming company called ARM Holdings, based in Cambridge, England ‘The next digital frontier’ that stakes higher in the market for electronic devices.

ARM chips in wireless routers from D-Link, Linksys, and Net gear; printers from HP, Konica Minolta, and Lexmark; graphing calculators from HP and TI; GPS devices from Blaupunkt, Garmin, and Tom-Tom and countless other devices. Not only these even the flight information system on Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne was powered by ARM. While on other hand, Intel has risen to become the leading supplier of microprocessors for home and business computing, commanding a virtual monopoly in the market for desktop, laptop, and server CPUs. Linux, Android, Atom, and ARM - the coming net book revolution could carve out a whole new niche in computing. Key to this vision of success is Atom, the most recent entry in Intel's processor line, Compact with extremely energy-efficient circuit Atom is already in the leading CPU for net book computers having its latest, ultra-low-voltage versions of the chip.

The battle lines in the microprocessor/microcontroller market which are drawn more clearly today than ever before. Not too long ago, it wasn’t that difficult to write something about how MIPS could make a run at the ARM space, which launched a Microchip's 32-bit line of microcontrollers. But now the fire seems to ignite more by the fuel of couple of significantly larger players, with a third player looming in the wings. The first two dwells with ARM partners, while the third is an ARM competitor. In the end, it's the embedded system developer who will likely profit through the entire horizon.

Although ARM almost has gained universal acceptance in the embedded systems market and supports a thriving developer ecosystem, it's not without its faults. Programmers who are accustomed with more traditional PC software development need to learn new tricks to be productive in ARM environments while Intel is trying to win a share of the lucrative digital electronics market. With the considered relationship between the two companies they never had been so frosty anyways. In fact, Intel even today designed and marketed its own ARM-based chips for several years, under the Scale brand. One can still find Scale processors inside Blackberry 8000 series handsets.