ARM Holdings develops and licenses microprocessors based on reduced instruction set computing (RISC) -- a chip architecture that allows several tasks to be processed simultaneously. More than 425 chip makers, including Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, and Texas Instruments license ARM's intellectual-property designs to make their own processors for use in such products as digital TVs, handheld computers, mobile phones, and set-top boxes. ARM also provides related application and development software, as well as complementary services. Japanese tech firm Softbank  acquired ARM in 2016 in a £24.3 billion deal.