Corporate Responsibility

ARM, the Smart Electronics Initiative and California

Changing how energy efficiency innovation can be done

We started the Smart Electronics Initiative in 2010 to reframe how policy-makers in California and the wider United States see consumer electronics companies - as innovators and partners in reducing energy use and resultant greenhouse gases.

California has a long history in the United States of pushing energy innovation and being the high-tech epicenter. Rarely are consumer electronics companies seen as innovators in this arena.

In reality, it is clear that this is nothing further from the truth and we needed to get directly to the companies leading the charge. This led to reaching out to clear innovators like ARM, Marvell, ON Semiconductor, Google, Belkin and others that are active leaders in making energy innovations in products (for example, set-top boxes and servers), the software in these products, or gadgets outside the devices that reduce energy use.

In working with ARM, we have found not only a vocal advocate and leader for promoting energy efficiency in all types of gadgets, but a network of other companies working to achieve similar goals. ARM is always looking for ways to engage other companies in our joint initiatives to promote energy efficiency opportunities. This is the only way policy-makers will see a new wave of companies they should support through policies and additional incentives to achieve enhanced energy savings. In addition, where else can you hear a company executive start a talk at its largest sponsored trade event – ARM TechCon 2012 – with a focus on climate change and sustainability.

In 2013, we will be leading an energy efficiency conference with the state to highlight ARM and its partners, targeting new R&D and innovation opportunities for leaders in energy efficiency and ensuring California's upcoming electronic standards' process incorporates the most innovative technologies.

Creating Leaders

Companies often claim that employees are their greatest resource. In our case it happens to be true.

As ARM continues to evolve, leadership plays an increasingly important role at many levels by aligning people, purpose and performance. Feedback from the 2009 Global Employee Opinion Survey underlined the importance of developing well qualified leaders. To achieve this we developed the ARM Leadership Program (ALP).

ALP is a global, structured leadership development programme with three objectives: to support leaders so that they excel in their current roles; to ensure they understand and adhere to our Management Charter and to prepare them for future leadership roles.

ALP is for all ARM employees who hold a leadership role whether it is technical leadership, division oversight, direct line management or project supervision. There are three ALP levels: Leading Others, Leading Leaders and Leading Organizations.

The programme recognizes that leaders come in many forms. It encourages leaders to develop self awareness about their actions and impact through workshops, webex sessions, action learning groups, mentoring, and formal self-awareness tools.

ALP is more than just a training course – it is a programme designed to encourage a change of mindset. Leaders play an important part in embedding a culture of continuous development. We believe that we are already seeing some positive impacts of ALP. Figures from the Global Employee Opinion Surveys show that our leaders feel more confident in their ability to lead, and employees consider their leaders more likely than in the past to be in tune with our values. We expect further increases when we run the full Employee Engagement Survey in 2013.

Leading the Way in Low Power Data Centers

Providing scalable computing power with the lowest environmental impact possible

As demand for the development of new ARM IP and innovation increases, there is a growing need to provide more data centre capacity. The new data centre built at ARM's Cambridge campus in 2012 is a good example of how ARM's low-power and sustainability ethos extends throughout our business activities. Specified to incorporate best practice solutions, the data centre has been recognized for its environmental credentials.

The 1.5MW data centre is part of our critical engineering design and test infrastructure. The facility has a projected annualized efficiency ratio (PUE) of below 1.1, representing one of the best efficiency ratios possible. A major reason that data centres require a great deal of power is that they need to be cooled to keep the temperature at a level at which the equipment can operate. Traditionally, data centres use power hungry cooling techniques. Rather than doing this, our data centre uses the ambient air outside. This significantly reduces the power needed to run the data centre.

Another way we reduced the environmental impact of the facility was to remove the need for huge batteries. If the power supply to our Cambridge site is lost, we have in place a flywheel-based UPS solution, instead of batteries, to carry us through until the backup generators are powered up.

We were very pleased to have commissioned the first data centre in the world to be awarded the Certified Energy Efficient Data Centre Award's (CEEDA) Gold certification following CEEDA's external audit process. The data centre has been recognized across the industry as one of the most efficient data centres in the world, also winning the European Data Centre of the year 2012 and the UK IT industry award for Best Data Centre Project in 2012. Our Cambridge data centre will set the standard for all ARM's future data centres and demonstrates our company-wide commitment to energy efficiency and carbon reduction.

ARM'S Place in the Community

Inspiring the next generation of engineers

We support education initiatives that encourage children into STEM subjects.

In March 2013, ARM was a Corporate Sponsor at The Big Bang Fair in London. This four day event was targeted at children interested in finding out about 'everything from robotics to nuclear reactors and from pharmacology to physics.' We were represented by a team of graduates who put on a fantastic booth for the estimated 70,000 attendees.

The hard work started well before the event itself. The team was tasked with driving and managing everything from booth design and demo creation to messaging and communication. They learned a lot!

On the day, the ARM booth was inundated with youngsters eager to work with our demos. The world record holding CubeStormer II was on hand to show how ARM powered robots and a smartphone can solve the Rubik's cube. Visitors were able to try out programming through challenges using Scratch, running on the ARM powered Raspberry Pi. Meanwhile, others raced Sphero balls around a three dimensional maze using smartphones as controllers. We also had ARM products on display to show how much technology has changed over the last twenty years.

In the hope of prolonging the impact, the team put together a teacher's guide to be used in lessons after the event. ARM Reps will also be attending related regional events throughout the UK.