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Acorn’s original ARM chip was impressive but it didn’t really capture much market share. The first ARM CPU competed against the 286, and did win. The 386 was a

Acorn’s original ARM chip was impressive but it didn’t really capture much market share. The first ARM CPU competed against the 286, and did win. The 386 was a big deal though. First, software was very expensive at the time, and the 386 allowed people to keep their investments. Second, it really was a powerful chip. It allowed 11mips vs ARM3’s 13, but the 486 achieved 54mips. ARM6 only hit 28mips. It’s worth noting that the 386 also used 32bit memory addressing and a 32 bit bus while ARM was 26bit addressing with a 16 bit bus.

chasil 3y ago
At the same time, it had unquestioned performance dominance until ARM made the decision for embedded. ARM would have been much more influential under Intel, rather than pursuing the i960 or the iAPX 432. Just imagine Intel ARM Archimedes. It would have crushed the IBM PS/2. Whoops. Seriously, even DEC was smart enough. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/StrongARM