ARM Holdings is joining the race to create technology to power driverless cars, widely regarded as the next major frontier for tech companies.

Having provided chip designs largely regarded as being central to the smartphone revolution, ARM is today unveiling a new technology designed to be used in autonomous vehicles and machines such as robots.

"We’ve gradually evolved how we design our high end processors over the years but this is a fairly major step change in the way we combine them," said John Ronco, a product marketing head at ARM. "We think it will be revolutionary in the way it enables our customers to build their products and design their chips."

When applied to a product such as a driverless car the processor, called the DynamiIQ, will be able to guarantee that the vehicle reacts safely in the event of a failure when there is no driver to step in, ARM said.

"From a safety point of view what we have here is unique," he said. "We don't believe there is anyone else on the market that can do this well."