James Ashton

Everything Blueprint

**A Financial Times Best Summer Book 2023** Out now: a gripping look at the rise of the microchip and the British tech company behind the blueprint to it all. 'A gripping and inspiring read.' Sir James Dyson 'A revealing and insightful biography of the company whose blueprints define the digital world.' Chris Miller, author of CHIP WAR: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology '[A] sparkly corporate biography.' Financial Times __________ One tiny device lies at the heart of the world's relentless technological advance: the microchip. Today, these slivers of silicon are essential to running just about any machine, from household devices and factory production lines to smartphones and cutting-edge weaponry. At the centre of billions of these chips is a blueprint created and nurtured by a single company: Arm. Founded in Cambridge in 1990, Arm's designs have been used an astonishing 250 billion times and counting. The UK's high-tech crown jewel is an indispensable part of a global supply chain driven by American brains and Asian manufacturing brawn that has become the source of rising geopolitical tension. With exclusive interviews and exhaustive research, The Everything Blueprint tells the story of Arm, from humble beginnings to its pivotal role in the mobile phone revolution and now supplying data centres, cars and the supercomputers that harness artificial intelligence. It explores the company's enduring relationship with Apple and numerous other tech titans, plus its multi-billion-pound sale to the one-time richest man in the world, Japan's Masayoshi Son. The Everything Blueprint details the titanic power struggle for control of the microchip, through the eyes of a unique British enterprise that has found itself in the middle of that battle. __________