Computer technology company Arm donates £3.5 million to fund the computer architecture research leaders of tomorrow
Arm donates £3.5 million to enable 15 PhD students over the next five years, to study at CASCADE — a dedicated new Computer Architecture and Semiconductor Design Centre based within the Department of Computer Science and Technology.
The Centre has the potential to enable further technology innovation within the semiconductor industry and is an important part of Arm’s mission to build the future of computing.
Richard Grisenthwaite, Executive Vice President and Chief Architect, Arm
The first three students to be supported by Arm's donation will begin their studies at the new research centre in the autumn of 2025. They will be followed by another three students each year for the following four years.
Arm — the company building the future of computing with its global headquarters in Cambridge — is the first organisation to donate to the new CASCADE Research Centre.
“We’re very grateful to them for their generous support,” says Professor Timothy Jones, Director of the Centre. “As well as funding 15 PhD students over the next five years, Arm’s involvement is helping us realise our vision of a Centre where research into addressing key challenges in this field is informed and supported by our industrial partners. That is extremely valuable to us as we work to make the Centre a destination for collaboration between companies, generating pre-competitive open-source artefacts and driving the development of novel computer architectures."
Speaking about their support, Richard Grisenthwaite, Executive Vice President and Chief Architect, Arm said:
“Our long-standing commitment to the University of Cambridge through this latest CASCADE funding highlights the vital collaboration between academia and industry as we embark on ground-breaking intent-based programming work to realise the future promise of AI through the next generation of processor designs. The Centre has the potential to enable further technology innovation within the semiconductor industry and is an important part of Arm’s mission to build the future of computing.”
A critical area of computing
Computer architecture is a critical area of computing. It underpins today’s technologies and drives the next generation of computing systems. According to the recently published National Semiconductor Strategy, the UK is currently a leader in computer architecture, underlining how vital the world-leading innovations and research coming out of the Department of Computer Science and Technology in this area are to the UK's leadership in this area.
But to maintain this leading position, we need to invest in developing the research leaders of tomorrow. That's why the Department established the new CASCADE Research Centre to fund PhD students working in this area, through support from industry.
Addressing grand challenges
The Centre will focus on research that addresses some of the grand challenges in computer architecture, design automation and semiconductors.
PhD students will work alongside researchers with expertise across the breadth of the area, encompassing the design and optimisation of general-purpose microprocessors, specialised accelerators, on-chip interconnect and memory systems, verification, compilation and networking, quantum architecture and resource estimation. This will allow them to explore the areas they are most passionate about while addressing industry-relevant research.
Students receiving funding from Arm will be working in the general area of intent-based computing, researching future systems that communicate what programs will do in the future so that the processor can make better decisions about how to execute them.
Arm was born in Cambridge in 1990 to change the computing landscape. Since then, its success in designing, architecting, and licensing high-performance, power-efficient CPUs — the 'brain' of all computers and many household and electronic devices — helped fuel the smartphone revolution and has made Arm a household name.
The company has a long research relationship with the Department. Most notably, this has led to the development of new cybersecurity technology, focusing on innovative ways to design the architecture of a computer’s CPU to make software less vulnerable to security breaches.
The technology, CHERI, extends conventional architectures and software stacks with novel hardware support for memory protection and secure encapsulation. Since early 2022, Arm’s industrial demonstrator of the technology — the Morello Board, has been made available to UK companies for testing through the UK government’s £200 million+ Digital Security by Design programme.
The CASCADE Research Centre is now taking applications for our first cohort of students to start in October 2025. For more information and for details on how to apply visit: www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/cascade/applications
Contact
For more information about the CASCADE Research Centre and how organisations can get involved in its work, please email the Centre's Director, Professor Tim Jones or contact:
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Philanthropic giving is at the heart of the success of the Collegiate University, enabling us to make discoveries that change the world and to ensure that our students receive an unrivalled education. Cambridge owes its world-leading excellence in research and teaching to the generosity of its supporters. Our history is synonymous with a history of far-sighted benefaction, and the same is as true today as it has ever been.
