ARM is a family of RISC instruction set architectures (ISAs) for computer processors. Arm Holdings develops the ISAs and licenses them to other companies, who build the physical devices that use the instruction set. It also designs and licenses cores that implement these ISAs.
RISC OS is an operating system designed to run on ARM computers. Originally designed in 1987 by Acorn Computers of England, it was made for use in its new line of ARM-based Archimedes personal computers and was then shipped with other computers produced by the company. Despite the demise of Acorn, RISC OS continues to be developed today by the RISC OS Open community on version 5.0 of the system that was open sourced in 2018.
Arch Linux is an independently developed Linux distribution designed with a rolling-release model. The default Arch Linux installation is intentionally minimal, and is configured by the user during installation so they may add only what they require. Arch is the basis for a multitude of other distributions, such as Manjaro, EndeavourOS, and Parabola.
Technical variations of Linux distributions include support for different hardware devices and systems or software package configurations. Organizational differences may be motivated by historical reasons. Other criteria include security, including how quickly security upgrades are available; ease of package management; and number of packages available.
A free and open-source graphics device driver is a software stack which controls computer-graphics hardware and supports graphics-rendering application programming interfaces (APIs) and is released under a free and open-source software license. Graphics device drivers are written for specific hardware to work within a specific operating system kernel and to support a range of APIs used by applications to access the graphics hardware. They may also control output to the display if the display driver is part of the graphics hardware. Most free and open-source graphics device drivers are developed by the Mesa project. The driver is made up of a compiler, a rendering API, and software which manages access to the graphics hardware.
ARM11 is a group of 32-bit RISC ARM processor cores licensed by ARM Holdings. The ARM11 core family consists of ARM1136J(F)-S, ARM1156T2(F)-S, ARM1176JZ(F)-S, and ARM11MPCore. Since ARM11 cores were released from 2002 to 2005, they are no longer recommended for new IC designs, instead ARM Cortex-A and ARM Cortex-R cores are preferred.
The SheevaPlug is a "plug computer" designed to allow standard computing features in as small a space as possible. It was a small embedded Linux ARM computer without a display which can be considered an early predecessor to the subsequent Raspberry Pi.
The ODROID is a series of single-board computers and tablet computers created by Hardkernel Co., Ltd., located in South Korea. Even though the name ODROID is a portmanteau of open + Android, the hardware is not actually open source because some parts of the design are retained by the company. Many ODROID systems are capable of running not only Android, but also regular Linux distributions.
The ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore is a 32-bit processor core licensed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARMv7-A architecture. It is a multicore processor with out-of-order superscalar pipeline running at up to 2.5 GHz.
Raspberry Pi is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom. The original Raspberry Pi computer was developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in association with Broadcom. Since 2012, all Raspberry Pi products have been developed by Raspberry Pi Ltd, which began as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Foundation.
The ARM Cortex-A is a group of 32-bit and 64-bit RISC ARM processor cores licensed by Arm Holdings. The cores are intended for application use. The group consists of 32-bit only cores: ARM Cortex-A5, ARM Cortex-A7, ARM Cortex-A8, ARM Cortex-A9, ARM Cortex-A12, ARM Cortex-A15, ARM Cortex-A17 MPCore, and ARM Cortex-A32, 32/64-bit mixed operation cores: ARM Cortex-A35, ARM Cortex-A53, ARM Cortex-A55, ARM Cortex-A57, ARM Cortex-A72, ARM Cortex-A73, ARM Cortex-A75, ARM Cortex-A76, ARM Cortex-A77, ARM Cortex-A78, ARM Cortex-A710, and ARM Cortex-A510 Refresh, and 64-bit only cores: ARM Cortex-A34, ARM Cortex-A65, ARM Cortex-A510 (2021), ARM Cortex-A715, ARM Cortex-A520, and ARM Cortex-A720.
The Allwinner A1X is a family of single-core SoC devices designed by Allwinner Technology from Zhuhai, China. Currently the family consists of the A10, A13, A10s and A12. The SoCs incorporate the ARM Cortex-A8 as their main processor and the Mali 400 as the GPU.
Cubieboard is a single-board computer, made in Zhuhai, Guangdong, China. The first short run of prototype boards were sold internationally in September 2012, and the production version started to be sold in October 2012. It can run Android 4 ICS, Ubuntu 12.04 desktop, Fedora 19 ARM Remix desktop, Armbian, Arch Linux ARM, a Debian-based Cubian distribution, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD.
Kali Linux is a Linux distribution designed for digital forensics and penetration testing. It is maintained and funded by Offensive Security. The software is based on the Debian Testing branch: most packages Kali uses are imported from the Debian repositories. The tagline of Kali Linux and BackTrack is "The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear", which is displayed on some backgrounds, see this example.
The ARM Cortex-A57 is a central processing unit implementing the ARMv8-A 64-bit instruction set designed by ARM Holdings. The Cortex-A57 is an out-of-order superscalar pipeline. It is available as SIP core to licensees, and its design makes it suitable for integration with other SIP cores into one die constituting a system on a chip (SoC).
The ARM Cortex-A53 is one of the first two central processing units implementing the ARMv8-A 64-bit instruction set designed by ARM Holdings' Cambridge design centre, along with the Cortex-A57. The Cortex-A53 is a 2-wide decode superscalar processor, capable of dual-issuing some instructions. It was announced October 30, 2012 and is marketed by ARM as either a stand-alone, more energy-efficient alternative to the more powerful Cortex-A57 microarchitecture, or to be used alongside a more powerful microarchitecture in a big.LITTLE configuration. It is available as an IP core to licensees, like other ARM intellectual property and processor designs.
Banana Pi is a line of single-board computers produced by the Chinese company Shenzhen SINOVOIP Company, its spin-off Guangdong BiPai Technology Company, and supported by Hon Hai Technology (Foxconn). Its hardware design was influenced by the Raspberry Pi, and both lines use the same 40-pin I/O connector.
This is a comparison of ARM instruction set architecture application processor cores designed by ARM Holdings and 3rd parties. It does not include ARM Cortex-R, ARM Cortex-M, or legacy ARM cores.
Nvidia Jetson is a series of embedded computing boards from Nvidia. The Jetson TK1, TX1 and TX2 models all carry a Tegra processor from Nvidia that integrates an ARM architecture central processing unit (CPU). Jetson is a low-power system and is designed for accelerating machine learning applications.
FydeOS is an operating system developed as a fork of the open-source project ChromiumOS. It uses the Linux kernel and integrates both a web browser platform and container technologies. The interface is similar to Chrome OS, and it is compatible with hardware platforms based on x86 and ARM architectures. Devices running FydeOS support the latest web application standards, compatibility with Android apps, and a Linux environment, providing a user experience similar to that of a Chromebook.
