BM's networking equipment. IBM even proposed them as embedded CPUs in some network processing functions. However, ARM ended up becoming extremely suc- cessful in the 1990s as it was instrumental in establishing the RISC technology as the globally undis- puted leading architecture for the implementation of main CPU components inside the upcoming system-on-a-chip (SOC) revolution. 42 We will talk more about this later in this book. In embedded devices, where the volume of a projected solution allowed this approach, companies found out that by designing appropriately and by reusing available chunks of logic (sometimes very large and complicated ones), either by themselves or through third parties who were willing to license and support the developed intellectual property cores, one could patch together a whole integrated system inside a silicon die in a comparatively short amount of time. As a result, a new level of inte- gration was created. Of course, it sounds much easier than it actually is. However, with the appropri- ate methodologies and a disciplined approach, it is now an undeniable fact that this new method of designing super chips is the only economically viable solution when striving for cost containment (the need to reuse components) and decreased the time to market. Until then, a certain system imple- menting a specific functionality would require an entire multilayer PCB with multiple CPUs, the memory of different types, and an I/O interface. Besides off-the-shelf components, it would also mean that one or more full- or semi-custom-designed chips would need to be designed. Now it finally became possible to combine the following: Large logic blocks called megacells, perhaps coming from unrelated in-house development teams. IP cores that were to be licensed from a third-party vendor, thereby keeping the proverbial lid over the erupting costs and gaining speed to market. The main CPU in such a configuration is usually a RISC processor (very often but obviously not always from ARM). Other integrated modul