The Everything Blueprint: The Microchip Design that Changed the World

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Pre-order 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

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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.

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Reviews

'This is a gripping and inspiring read. The Everything Blueprint reveals how a British technology company fought to become a global one - and achieved this thanks to a powerful combination of homegrown talent, international collaboration between brilliant people, and dogged ambition. Arm's success is proof that in today's connected world it is vital to go abroad to achieve scale. The key to this story is a fierce determination to be No. 1 - and never giving into complacency.' Sir James Dyson, British inventor, industrial designer and entrepreneur
'The Everything Blueprint provides the hidden history of the most important company most people have never heard of. We all rely on Arm's chip technology but James Ashton provides a dramatic account of where Arm came from-and how this company will shape the future of computing and artificial intelligence. 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
'This is an engrossing history of the most important company to emerge in the UK in the last 40 years and how it fits in to the world's most vital industry. It's also a sobering reminder that if we are careless about Arm's future we can give up on our aspirations to be a leading tech nation.' Rory Cellan-Jones, former BBC technology correspondent and author of Always On: Hope and Fear in the Social Smartphone Era
'James Ashton weaves his way through the intricate geopolitics of the semiconductor industry with an insider's view of Arm's remarkable rise. From Silicon Valley to Taiwan via Cambridge, this book provides an essential account of a vital industry, and, in an era infused with artificial intelligence, reminds us that technology remains inherently human.' Reid Hoffman, partner at Greylock and co-founder of LinkedIn
'Swaffham, Bulbeck in England is not writ as large in the lore of the chip industry as California's Mountain View (birthplace of Intel) and Sunnyvale (birthplace of nVidia), or Taiwan's Hsinchu, the cradle of TSMC. But this village should be in the register because that's where the computer world first encountered ARM, a company whose tale James Ashton deftly weaves into a tapestry stretching from the first transistor to chatGPT.' Sir Michael Moritz, author of Return of the Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs, the Creation of Apple, and How it Changed the World

Author Bio

James Ashton writes about business, technology, economics and leadership. He has been Executive Editor and City Editor of the London Evening Standard and Independent titles and City Editor of the Sunday Times. He is chief executive of the Quoted Companies Alliance, a members' organisation which champions London's stock market-listed growth businesses.

James is the author of two previous business books: The Nine Types of Leader (Kogan Page) and FTSE: The Inside Story (Nicholas Brealey, co-written with FTSE founder Mark Makepeace).

Born in West Yorkshire, he was educated at the University of St Andrews and City University in London and lives in Surrey with his wife and daughter.