Daryl Baxter.

From Acorn to ARM.

A little fact for yourselves:

The first computers i used was an Acorn Computer & a BBC Micro. My primary school only had these, as it was before the boom of Windows 95, and these would be the only computers you could find in a school.

I remember in the breaks when it would rain, if you weren’t playing ‘Guess Who’, you could go on one of these machines and load up a floppy disk nearly the size of a magazine.

But, if you remember playing this, then you’re in my good books:

I remember loading it on the 5 inch floppy disks, and typing anything to see what he would do.

Whereas the Acorn, i remember it loosely resembling a Windows 95 desktop, but the pixels managed on less than 256 colours and was mainly used to make the banners across the classroom.

This and the Mega Drive is when it all began.

So i came across an article detailing how Acorn went from building their own computers and OS, to designing the chips used in 99% of mobile devices today.

Herman Hauser was once asked why a great British success story like Acorn finally failed. He queried the last word: “There are over 100 companies in the Cambridge area that can trace their beginnings back to Acorn, and have been founded by Acorn alumni. ARM has now sold over ten billion processors, ten times more than Intel.”

Source.

Intel ‘Ivy Bridge’ launches.

Intel’s processors for 2012 have finally launched, with a lot of fuss over the ‘tri-gate’ transistor:

Intel hopes a new transistor technology, in development for 11 years, will help it challenge Arm’s reputation for energy efficiency. 

“For the user, that means the benefits of better performance and energy use will continue for as far as Intel sees on the road map.” 

“What Intel has been able to do is instead of just shrinking the transistor in two dimensions, we have been able to create a three-dimensional transistor for the first time.”