3 ms·

Let's be serious, the BBC micro is awesome but it's no more the ancestor to my phone than an Apple II.

by djmips 1y ago

lproven 1y ago
> it's no more the ancestor to my phone than an Apple II. It really is. Both Acorn (BBC Micro designers/manufacturers) and Apple Computer (Apple II ditto) bought in the MOS 6502 chip. When it came to successor models, both tried the 65C816. Acorn made the Communicator: https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/Communicator.html https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/Commun... Apple made the Apple IIgs: https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_553246 https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_55324... Both were not delighted with its performance and looked elsewhere. Apple went for the 68000 for its next mass-market model, the Mac. (I am aware the timeline is more complex; this is a simplification.) Acorn evaluated the 68000, the 80186, the NatSemi 16032 and others. It designed its own chip instead: the ARM, Acorn RISC Machine. This was first launched as an add-on accelerator for the BBC Micro. https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/48862/Acorn-1MB-A-Second-Processor/ https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/48862/Acorn-1MB-A-Se... It was later launched as an Acorn computer, running a 32-bit port of Acorn's MOS and BASIC. It included a 6502 emulators and so could run some BBC Micro software. https://www.onirom.fr/wiki/blog/21-04-2022_Acorn-Archimedes/ https://www.onirom.fr/wiki/blog/21-04-2022_Acorn-Archimedes/ That ARM chip is the direct ancestor of the chip in all Android devices, all iOS devices, and modern Macs.
rjsw 1y ago
It is a bit closer link than that, the same people designed the BBC micro and ARM1.
- cesaref 1y ago
  If he'd been talking about the Acorn Archimedes, he'd have had a point.
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    No, he'd have even less of a point.
Lio 1y ago
Well the ARM's original goal was to run BBC BASIC faster than the BBC B could run assembly code. To that end the ARM instruction set was heavily inspired by the 6502 in the Beeb and cruicially the BBC Micro was used to simulate the ARM before it went into production. Latter the original ARM development kits were connected as second processors to Beebs courtesy of the Tube connector. I think it's fare to say that without the BBC Micro there would be no ARM processors. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/a-history-of-arm-part-1-building-the-first-chip/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/a-history-of-arm-par...
- klelatti 1y ago
  > Well the ARM's original goal was to run BBC BASIC faster than the BBC B could run assembly code. That seems an unlikely goal given BBC BASIC was interpreted! Happy to be proven wrong but I've never heard one of the original team say that.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    It could be the point of what optimizations would be possible on the interpreter. One of the optimizations Google introduced on Android 7, when they backtracked for AOT at installation time introduced in Android 5, was that the DEX interpreter was rewriten from scratch in cleverly manually written Assembly, before handing it over to the JIT/AOT infrastructure. BBC Basic was also one of the few that allowed direct inline Assembly, instead of having to go through DATA blocks.
    - klelatti 1y ago
      BBC BASIC wasn't JIT'd etc so not sure how all the Android comparisons come in! Just to make the comparison more concrete the ARM1 ran at 8MHz and was 32-bit and with a lot more registers compared to the BBC Micro's 6502 running at 2MHz. It was a lot faster but not fast enough to make BBC BASIC run at BBC Micro Assembly language speed.
      - pjmlp 1y ago

Let's be serious, the BBC micro is awesome but it's no more the ancestor to my phone than an Apple II.

by djmips 1y ago

Let's be serious, the BBC micro is awesome but it's no more the ancestor to my phone than an Apple II.

> it's no more the ancestor to my phone than an Apple II. It really is. Both Acorn (BBC Micro designers/manufacturers) and Apple Computer (Apple II ditto) bought in the MOS 6502 chip. When it came to successor models, both tried the 65C816. Acorn made the Communicator: https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/Communicator.html https://chrisacorns.computinghistory.org.uk/Computers/Commun... Apple made the Apple IIgs: https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_553246 https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_55324... Both were not delighted with its performance and looked elsewhere. Apple went for the 68000 for its next mass-market model, the Mac. (I am aware the timeline is more complex; this is a simplification.) Acorn evaluated the 68000, the 80186, the NatSemi 16032 and others. It designed its own chip instead: the ARM, Acorn RISC Machine. This was first launched as an add-on accelerator for the BBC Micro. https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/48862/Acorn-1MB-A-Second-Processor/ https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/48862/Acorn-1MB-A-Se... It was later launched as an Acorn computer, running a 32-bit port of Acorn's MOS and BASIC. It included a 6502 emulators and so could run some BBC Micro software. https://www.onirom.fr/wiki/blog/21-04-2022_Acorn-Archimedes/ https://www.onirom.fr/wiki/blog/21-04-2022_Acorn-Archimedes/ That ARM chip is the direct ancestor of the chip in all Android devices, all iOS devices, and modern Macs.

rjsw 1y ago

It is a bit closer link than that, the same people designed the BBC micro and ARM1.

cesaref 1y ago
If he'd been talking about the Acorn Archimedes, he'd have had a point.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  No, he'd have even less of a point.

Lio 1y ago

Well the ARM's original goal was to run BBC BASIC faster than the BBC B could run assembly code. To that end the ARM instruction set was heavily inspired by the 6502 in the Beeb and cruicially the BBC Micro was used to simulate the ARM before it went into production. Latter the original ARM development kits were connected as second processors to Beebs courtesy of the Tube connector. I think it's fare to say that without the BBC Micro there would be no ARM processors. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/a-history-of-arm-part-1-building-the-first-chip/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/a-history-of-arm-par...

klelatti 1y ago
> Well the ARM's original goal was to run BBC BASIC faster than the BBC B could run assembly code. That seems an unlikely goal given BBC BASIC was interpreted! Happy to be proven wrong but I've never heard one of the original team say that.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  It could be the point of what optimizations would be possible on the interpreter. One of the optimizations Google introduced on Android 7, when they backtracked for AOT at installation time introduced in Android 5, was that the DEX interpreter was rewriten from scratch in cleverly manually written Assembly, before handing it over to the JIT/AOT infrastructure. BBC Basic was also one of the few that allowed direct inline Assembly, instead of having to go through DATA blocks.
  - klelatti 1y ago
    BBC BASIC wasn't JIT'd etc so not sure how all the Android comparisons come in! Just to make the comparison more concrete the ARM1 ran at 8MHz and was 32-bit and with a lot more registers compared to the BBC Micro's 6502 running at 2MHz. It was a lot faster but not fast enough to make BBC BASIC run at BBC Micro Assembly language speed.
    - pjmlp 1y ago