Will you still need me / Will you still feed me / When I’m 64?

Ah, the lads from Cambridge have finally grown up. Time to join the big kids at the grownups' table.

Last week ARM began a long striptease by lifting the veil from its newest CPU architecture. The new design doesn't even have a name yet, it's just called "ARM version 8," or ARMv8 for short. The coming months (and perhaps years) will see a series of ever more-revealing announcements as ARM shows us a bit more of what ARMv8 has to offer. For now, we'll just have to drool and use our imaginations.

The first ARMv8-based chips are a year away, so it'll be some time before this new CPU has much of an effect on the market. When they hit, they'll herald the arrival of ARM to the 64-Bit Club, a group that includes PowerPC, x86, SPARC, MIPS, and others. At long last, ARM will have made the big time.