Up To Date - The Acorn RISC Microprocessor - The History of arm Semiconductor
Introduction
Most of us keep a small computer in our pocket or at arms reach every minute of the day. Your cell phone, tablet, smart watch and smart TV or set-top-box all use an arm microprocessor. The current incarnation of arm microprocessors owes its technology to its predecessor ARM. This is the history of Acorn computers, and the birth of arm.
The Brief History of Acorn
Acorn Computers is sometimes referred to as the British Apple. They were established in Cambridge, England in 1978. They produced many popular computers like the Acorn Electron and Archimedes. In the 1980's Acorn and the British Broadcasting Company produced the BBC Micro. The collaborative computer dominated the educational market in the UK. It also dominated the home computer markets.
Acorn was in competition with Sinclair (Timex Sinclair for the US), Commodore, Apple, and the PC. Sinclair and Commodore were in control of the low-end 8-bit computer market. The Sinclair spectrum series of computers were a mainstay European homes. The Commodore 64 is one of the best selling personal computers of all time. Apple Computers controlled the education market in the US and was threatening Acorn in the UK. In the 80's the PC was the leading business computer available due to the popularity of DOS.
To hone their competitive edge, they decided to move away from the 6502 chip. Their hardware architecture designers were 1nspired by the Berkeley RISC project. VLSI was chosen as the manufacturing partner for the new microprocessor. In 1984 the ARM microprocessor was born.
In 1985 Acorn was bleeding debt. The news emerged that Acorn owed over 3.1 million pounds (8.3 million pounds in 2021) to various creditors. Acorn signed an agreement with Olivetti computers (an Italian computer manufacturer). Olivetti continued to buy up stock in the company. The Acorn RISC Microprocessor project was a secret from Olivetti until negotiations were completed. With the sale completed to Oliovetti, Acorn had the resources to complete their new RISC chip. The first generation ARM microprocessor was completed on April 26 1985.
From 1986 through the late 90's Acorn continued to make computers for the BBC. They released the BBC Micro Master series of computers. This included X86 compatible versions of the BBC Master. In 1987 Acorn released the Archimedes A300 using ARM microprocessors and the new RISC OS. They continued to release faster Archimedes systems through the A7000 in 1994. Their next computer came in the form of the RISC PC which used the StrongARM microprocessor and RISC OS 2. In the early 90's they released a laptop, a custom Psion Series 3 PDA, the NewsPad, and several set-top boxes. Acorn and their silicon partner VLSI spun it's microprocessor business into ARM semiconductor. Acorn, Apple and VLSI were the major investment partners in ARM. VLSI was the primary licensor of the technology.
Acorn also designed other computing devices like set-top boxes and DVRs. They licensed a palm-top computer from Psion Systems. It was based on the Psion Series 3 with rebranded software for Acorn. They also designed and manufactured a laptop computer. At the time the set-top boxes were ahead of their time. The palm-top computer failed to meet sales expectations. The laptop couldn't compete with the Apple PowerBook, and PC laptops available at the time. With the failure of these products Acorn's debt was rising.
In 1998 Acorn had losses of 9 Million Pounds. They started spinning off and selling parts of the company. Acorn's OS division was spun off into RISC OS Ltd. They licensed the distribution rights to the currently available computers to Castle Technologies. Pace Micro Technologies purchased Acorn's set-top box division. In 1999 the remaining assets in Acorn Computers were renamed to Element 14. In 2000 the ARM semiconductor division was spun-off into arm Ltd.
Fast forward to 2021. Arm is the licensor for the microprocessor architecture in most mobile devices. That includes microprocessors from Qualcomm, Huawei, MediaTek and Broadcom.
Conclusion
Acorn revolutionized the computers industry. It helped to miniaturize the computer to a device that can fit in your pocket. Arm RISC microprocessors power many new power efficient laptop and desktop computers. With the immense promise of RISC-V it proves that there is more to come from the RISC architecture. The future of computing sure is bright.
Coming Up
Project Summer Fun is here. The first article is an overview of this year's Project Summer Fun. My next Up To Date article is about RISC microprocessors. There are product reviews and build guides on the way. As usual there will be more artwork posted to my art BLOG, and musings in my personal blog and Deviant Art pages.