5 ms·
The irony in the narrative surrounding the ascendence of ARM is that the key innovation occurred in the Apple Newton. [1] History rhymes, they say. If I rememb
by sradman 6y ago
The irony in the narrative surrounding the ascendence of ARM is that the key innovation occurred in the Apple Newton. [1] History rhymes, they say. If I remember correctly, it was Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) silicon team that transformed ARM into a performance-per-watt powerhouse (no pun intended) to meet the requirements of the Newton.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers#ARM_Ltd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers#ARM_Ltd.
- the-dude 6y agoARM has always been a performance-per-watt powerhouse. The story goes the first processor was tested without a proper power connection and ran on the IO-pins.
- monocasa 6y ago> The story goes the first processor was tested without a proper power connection and ran on the IO-pins. That's real common actually. The current from the diodes on the I/O pins has to go somewhere.
- the-dude 6y agoThen it is odd I have ever only read the story about ARM. Do Intel's/AMD's proto's run on their I/O pins?
- monocasa 6y agoIt's not really a fair comparison, because it's not the same TDP niche. I imagine Intel Quarks will though. Probably any of the SoC versions as well. I've actually had to design around this in a board once. Had a chip where the reset line didn't hook up to all the logic inside it. Originally just put FETs on the power lines, but that wasn't enough and I had to gate off all the I/O lines too.
- sradman 6y agoThe Wikipedia page on the history of the StrongARM [0] makes the following claim: > According to Allen Baum, the StrongARM traces its history to attempts to make a low-power version of the DEC Alpha, which DEC's engineers quickly concluded was not possible. They then became interested in designs dedicated to low-power applications which led them to the ARM family. One of the only major users of the ARM for performance-related products at that time was Apple, whose Newton device was based on the ARM platform. DEC approached Apple wondering if they might be interested in a high-performance ARM, to which the Apple engineers replied "Phhht, yeah. You can’t do it, but, yeah, if you could we'd use it." [1] Regardless of the degree of DEC's contribution, the ARM phoenix arose out of the flames of the Apple Newton. Further irony is that Intel acquired StrongARM from DEC as part of a legal settlement, then sold StrongARM/XScale, then created Atom for this market, while in parallel they developed a low-power 386 for the RIM Leapfrog/Blackberry but later concluded that this market was not large enough (forcing Blackberry to switch to ARM with the introduction of their Java based SDK)[2]. Intel has made some magnificent missteps. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM#History [1] https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2018/06/102717165-05-01-acc.pdf https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20... [2] Graham Tubbs "Harvesting the Blackberry" https://books.google.ca/books?id=oSaoNQcFTzMC&lpg=PA25&dq=Pivotal%20meeting%20Graham%20Tubbs%20Intel&pg=PA25#v=onepage&q=Pivotal%20meeting%20Graham%20Tubbs%20Intel&f=true https://books.google.ca/books?id=oSaoNQcFTzMC&lpg=PA25&dq=Pi...
- w0mbat 6y agoThe original ARM team was given a power budget of 1 watt, but when the first silicon was made they found they had accidentally made it so efficient that it ran on a tenth of a watt. There is a nice little first-hand history of the early days of ARM here: https://www.theregister.com/Print/2012/05/03/unsung_heroes_of_tech_arm_creators_sophie_wilson_and_steve_furber/ https://www.theregister.com/Print/2012/05/03/unsung_heroes_o...