Arm’s software chief sees human language as the new way to program

If you haven’t heard of Arm, you haven’t been paying attention to how ubiquitous the chipmaker has become. Arm’s processor designs power Macs, iPhones, and every other major smartphone line. Queries made through ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude pass through an Arm-based chip at some point. For more than 40 years, Arm’s focus was on chip design. Major device and AI chip makers then licensed those designs and turned them into hardware. But the company’s focus is changing: Arm is now making hardware using its own AGI CPU , which OpenAI and Meta will use and which will allow the chipmaker itself to compete with the likes of Apple, Intel, Nvidia, Amazon and Google. Arm’s envisions its new Performix software suite using “recipes” and AI insights to help engineers identify suspect code and CPU hotspots. Alex Spinelli , who leads Arm’s software initiatives as senior vice president for AI and developer platforms, is as AI-native an engineer as you’ll find; he played a central role in the TensorFlow s