What does ARM mean in COMPUTING

An Advanced RISC Machine (ARM) is a computer processor architecture designed by ARM Limited and introduced in 1985. It offers low power consumption and cost advantages over other processor designs making them suitable for use in battery-powered devices such as mobile phones.

An ARM processor offers several benefits over other types of processors such as very low power consumption, high performance levels when compared with its size and cost, and offer scalability for different applications. Additionally, it requires less heat dissipation than other processors meaning it can easily be used in portable computing devices or those without cooling fans.

Operating systems that support the ARM architecture include Windows 10 IoT Enterprise Edition (for industrial applications), Linux distributions such as Ubuntu MATE 18+ and Debian 9+, Android 9+ (Pie & upcoming Q), iOS 13+ (Apple iPhone/iPad/iPod) among many others.

The main difference between these two architectures lies in their instruction set which impacts how programs run on each platform. The x86 platform generally runs more powerful desktop applications than what can be achieved through an ARM system which is built for smaller scale embedded tasks due to its reduced instruction set size requirement. However both platforms can handle many similar tasks if specific optimizations are taken into consideration when coding for either platform.

While the security features offered by early versions of the architecture were limited to basic 8-bit microprocessors, more recent versions have included additional security measures to provide a safer computing experience. It is still important to take precautions against common threats such as malware and hackers when working with any type of processor though - regardless of whether it utilizes the ARM or x86 architectures.