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Our first family computer was an Acorn Archimedes, we had it for maybe a year before it was replaced by a PC with an Intel. Now here we are 30 years later and
by samwillis 3y ago
Our first family computer was an Acorn Archimedes, we had it for maybe a year before it was replaced by a PC with an Intel.
Now here we are 30 years later and I'm typing on a laptop running on a ARM (née Acorn RISC Machines, then Advanced RISC Machines), I have an ARM in my pocket, another in a tablet in my bag. My wife is next to me on an ARM laptop, she's also got an ARM on her arm... we're listening to music on a wifi speaker running on an ARM. There are probably 30-40 ARMs in one way or another around our house. Amazing really.
- deepspace 3y ago> Acorn Archimedes Newb /s I cut my teeth on an Acron Atom in 1982, and upgraded to a BBC Micro (a renamed Acorn Electron) the next year. But, yes, I never would have thought that, 40 years later, most of the CPUs in my house would still be derived from that scrappy British's company's designs.
- downrightmike 3y agoApple bought out Acorn and used them to design their chips.
- monocasa 3y agoI wouldn't go that far. Apple's strategy in a lot of cases is more like that of automobile manufacturers where they invest heavily in a company as sort of a king maker, but then hold them over a barrel on later margins with the threat that they can make another king. That's what they did with TSMC, pre purchasing chips to the tune of ~$15B which allowed TSMC to go ahead and buy a bunch of the first EUV steppers.
- acomjean 3y agoAbout 10 years ago, my partner turned to me and said, there is an ARM core for every person on the planet. Her company was designing printer chips and using ARM cores. They bought the reference design to use. "Arm and a Leg" they nicknamed it due to high fees even back then. I bought some "Armh" (ARM's old ticker symbol) which did really well before they got bought by softbank. Oddly hard to find any info about historical stocks on the interwebs.