Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And when it comes
Speaker 1: to micro processors, there are a few names that tend
Speaker 1: to pop up. Intel is obviously a big one. A
Speaker 1: M D is another, and those are the two they
Speaker 1: get talked about when you're discussing stuff like dusktop computers,
Speaker 1: you know, PCs. But when it comes to more lightweight devices,
Speaker 1: you know, like mobile devices, there's another name, ARM a
Speaker 1: r M. Recently, news broke that the graphics card company
Speaker 1: in Vidio would be acquiring ARM for a staggering forty
Speaker 1: billion dollars a princely some so I thought it would
Speaker 1: be a good idea to kind of go on a
Speaker 1: full rundown on what ARM is, its history, and what
Speaker 1: this acquisition means for the industry and for people like
Speaker 1: you and me. And this is gonna be a two
Speaker 1: parter because ARM has been around for a while and
Speaker 1: its story is actually really interesting. Plus it gives me
Speaker 1: opportunities to go off on crazy tangents and tell you guys,
Speaker 1: how various stuff works, which you know is kind of
Speaker 1: my jam. As the kids say, you know, fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1: We'll start with some history lessons. Now, typically when I
Speaker 1: cover the history of a company or a technology, I
Speaker 1: run into a few cases where dates maybe a little confusing.
Speaker 1: Sometimes one source will have a specific date for an
Speaker 1: event that conflicts with a date that's found in another source,
Speaker 1: and so at that point I will usually say that
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I apologize. I can't get too specific. And
Speaker 1: you would think that ARM wouldn't have this issue. The
Speaker 1: company isn't that old. We can measure its age in
Speaker 1: a few decades, but we only go back to the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties or so to to look at origins really
Speaker 1: the late nineteen seventies, And yet when it comes to
Speaker 1: particulars such as which events really got things started for ARM,
Speaker 1: there's actually a lot of disagreements. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you a a version of ARMS history. But you know,
Speaker 1: don't think of this as the definitive version, because some
Speaker 1: people say, no, you shouldn't trace its history to that point.
Speaker 1: That silly go to this other point instead. Here in
Speaker 1: the United States, when we talk about the early days
Speaker 1: of personal computers, the names that typically pop up in
Speaker 1: those discussions are Apple, Texas Instruments, Commodore, maybe Tandy, and
Speaker 1: then IBM would follow not too long behind does. But
Speaker 1: across the pond in the UK there was another computer
Speaker 1: company that was trying to get an early part of
Speaker 1: the personal computer era, and this company was called Acorn
Speaker 1: Computers Limited. The three co founders of the company where
Speaker 1: Chris Curry, Hermann Hauser and Andy Hopper, whom I suppose
Speaker 1: was just not dedicated enough to go all in with
Speaker 1: the illiterate names of the other two founders, way to
Speaker 1: go and y. Chris Curry was born in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: six in Cambridge, England. He studied math and physics in
Speaker 1: school and went on to work for various technology companies,
Speaker 1: including Pie Limited that's a p y e. Not you
Speaker 1: know the kind of pie that I love, The Royal
Speaker 1: Radar Establishment and Sinclair Radionics. While his stints at Pie
Speaker 1: and Royal Radar were fairly short, he stuck around at
Speaker 1: Sinclair for several years. By the late nineteen seventies, Curry
Speaker 1: was interested in developing computers, but he was finding no
Speaker 1: real support at Sinclair. He had been working on some
Speaker 1: stuff he was trying to pitch the idea to Sinclair,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't finding them very receptive. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: leave off for now with with Curry and move on
Speaker 1: and we'll regroup in a second. Swapping over to Hermann Hauser,
Speaker 1: who was born in Austria in nineteen forty eight. He
Speaker 1: came to Cambridge as a teenager to attend school and
Speaker 1: learn English, but he really enjoyed it. He went on
Speaker 1: to pursue advanced studies in places like Vienna University, but
Speaker 1: he came back to England attending King's College in Cambridge
Speaker 1: and getting an advanced degree. They're smart, dude. His work
Speaker 1: in physics led him to become friends with Curry, and
Speaker 1: when Curry was ready to start a company to manufacture
Speaker 1: and market personal computers, Houser was on board. Andy Hopper
Speaker 1: was the youngest of the three co founders, having been
Speaker 1: born in nineteen fifty three in Warsaw, Poland. Hopper studied
Speaker 1: in London and later Swansea University before pursuing postgraduate studies
Speaker 1: at the University of Cambridge. He focused on computer science
Speaker 1: and he was researching networking technologies. He co founded a
Speaker 1: company called Orbis Limited, which focused mostly on Networking Tech,
Speaker 1: and this entity would end up merging with Curry and
Speaker 1: Houser's efforts to bring Acorn Computers Limited to life. Although
Speaker 1: the original name for the actual company was Cambridge Processing
Speaker 1: Unit Limited CPU cute right, but the co founders decided
Speaker 1: to use the name Acorn Computers as the trading name
Speaker 1: for the company, allegedly choosing the name Acorn so that
Speaker 1: their computers would appear ahead of rival Apple Computers whenever
Speaker 1: it was in an alphabetical listing. One of the earliest
Speaker 1: jobs that the group had was to develop micro controllers
Speaker 1: for fruit machines, and folks, I consider myself an Anglo
Speaker 1: file but when I first read that, I have to
Speaker 1: admit I had no idea what the heck it meant.
Speaker 1: In my imagination, it was some sort of harvesting device
Speaker 1: that depended on micro controllers to do something like pick apples.
Speaker 1: But no, that, of course, is not what a fruit
Speaker 1: machine is. And my guess is there's more than a
Speaker 1: few of you out there giggling at my ignorance right now.
Speaker 1: It's well warranted. So a fruit machine in this context
Speaker 1: is what Brits call a slot machine. I guess they
Speaker 1: do it because of the symbols of fruit that appear
Speaker 1: on the various parts of the slot machine. So the
Speaker 1: first big job that this new company had was designing
Speaker 1: micro controllers for these gambling machines the slot machines to
Speaker 1: make the more difficult to tamper with, as there were
Speaker 1: some clever hackers who are finding ways to rig big
Speaker 1: payouts from the machines. And while the machines are designed
Speaker 1: to take money from you, uh, they don't like the
Speaker 1: design to go the opposite direction. The house is not
Speaker 1: a big fan of that. A few years later, the
Speaker 1: UK launched an initiative to put a computer in every classroom.
Speaker 1: Acorn Computers secured the contract to provide these computers to
Speaker 1: produce them, and it was called the BBC Micro. The
Speaker 1: Micro used a processor called the six five O two.
Speaker 1: This was an eight bit processor from Rockwell h Though
Speaker 1: engineers from Most Technology originally developed the six five O
Speaker 1: two processor, the six five O two was a low
Speaker 1: cost processor that totally changed the processor market. It was
Speaker 1: much less expensive than Intel's d D processor at the time,
Speaker 1: and as such, the six five O two had found
Speaker 1: its way into numerous technologies in the including the Atrey
Speaker 1: video game console and the Apple two Computer Systems, among others.
Speaker 1: The micro contract gave Acorn Computers some momentum. In three
Speaker 1: the company wanted to free itself from dependence upon processors
Speaker 1: from other companies. To computer scientists from Cambridge University, Sophie
Speaker 1: Wilson and Steve Ferber became the head designers for the
Speaker 1: new thirty two bit processor. Ferber focused on the actual
Speaker 1: physical design of the chips architecture, while Wilson was focusing
Speaker 1: on the instruction set. The limited resources forced the pair
Speaker 1: to come up with a simplified approach to processors, and
Speaker 1: they chose to go with a specific approach to processor
Speaker 1: design in a category called reduced instruction set computing or
Speaker 1: risk r I s C. This is in contrast with
Speaker 1: complex instruction set computing or see I s C CISC.
Speaker 1: But what does that actually mean? Well, let's take a
Speaker 1: step back to understand this. A processor's job is to
Speaker 1: perform arithmetic and logic operations on data, and this includes
Speaker 1: basic stuff like you know, adding and subtracting, kind of
Speaker 1: like your basic calculator, and it can also involve transferring
Speaker 1: numbers and comparing different numbers to one another. The data
Speaker 1: comes in as binary or let's be zeros and ones.
Speaker 1: The processor follows instructions given to it by a program.
Speaker 1: So the processor gets its instructions like, you know, add
Speaker 1: the next two numbers together and then send it on,
Speaker 1: and then the processor executes that instruction on the supplied
Speaker 1: zeros and ones that come in. And that's basically what's
Speaker 1: going on with a processor at a very high level.
Speaker 1: In addition, we describe the number of operations a processor
Speaker 1: can complete in a second as its clock speed, which
Speaker 1: we talk about in hurts. A single pulse of the
Speaker 1: processor is a cycle. A one Hurts processor would only
Speaker 1: be able to complete a single operation every second. It
Speaker 1: would be unfathomably slow to us. A decent processor speed
Speaker 1: today is somewhere between two point five and three point
Speaker 1: five giga hurts. That's decent. I'm not talking about top
Speaker 1: of the line, but that would mean two point five
Speaker 1: to three point five billion cycles per second. So the
Speaker 1: processors in modern computers are pulsing billions of times every second,
Speaker 1: and each pulse can power and operation. Now, some instructions
Speaker 1: are pretty simple and they might only require one or
Speaker 1: two cycles to complete that instruction. Other instructions are more
Speaker 1: complicated and might have lots more steps involved, and this
Speaker 1: is where we get to the risk versus CISK approach.
Speaker 1: A risk based processor handles very simple instructions, so it
Speaker 1: handles each individual instruction very quickly, like within a cycle.
Speaker 1: CISC systems can handle much more complicated instructions. The flip
Speaker 1: side of that is that while a risk based processor
Speaker 1: can execute individual instructions very very quickly, you might need
Speaker 1: a lot more instructions to complete your overall task. The
Speaker 1: CISK approach might take longer to execute a single instruction,
Speaker 1: but you need fewer instructions overall to complete your task.
Speaker 1: Now that is a little confusing, So I'll use an analogy.
Speaker 1: If I told the typical person, I need you to
Speaker 1: go outside and check the weather, that's a deceptively complicated
Speaker 1: instruction because there's a lot of other stuff that's nested
Speaker 1: in that request. For example, if I were to try
Speaker 1: and tell this to a robot, I might have to
Speaker 1: include what direction the robot needs to go in, how
Speaker 1: fast it should move, where of the door is, whether
Speaker 1: that door opens inward or outward, the actual mechanism the
Speaker 1: robot would have to manipulate to open the door, and
Speaker 1: so on. So what appears to be a simple task
Speaker 1: is actually when you break it down into its individual components,
Speaker 1: much more complicated. So a program running on a risk
Speaker 1: based processor has to break down instructions kind of in
Speaker 1: that way in a longer series of simple tasks that
Speaker 1: add up to whatever you're end goal is. But risk
Speaker 1: chips are highly optimized, so for certain applications a risk
Speaker 1: based chip can be ideal. These days, we have a
Speaker 1: lot of risk chips and stuff like mobile devices, for example,
Speaker 1: because these devices are rarely running super complicated software and
Speaker 1: they need that low power, high efficiency output. One related
Speaker 1: thing I'd like to mention, though it doesn't tie directly
Speaker 1: into arms history or anything, is what is called a
Speaker 1: semantic gap. Now, remember when I said that processors taken
Speaker 1: data in the form of zeros and ones. This binary
Speaker 1: code is a type of machine language, or the kind
Speaker 1: of information a machine can actually process. Machines are not
Speaker 1: able to process information in other forms directly. The information
Speaker 1: must ultimately convert into machine language, in this case zeros
Speaker 1: and ones, and information that we can express pretty succinctly
Speaker 1: with language and numerals. Beyond just the ones and zeros,
Speaker 1: that ends up taking up a lot of space. You
Speaker 1: have to use a lot of ones and zeros to
Speaker 1: represent that kind of information. But computers are really good
Speaker 1: at processing machine code. It happens lightning fast. However, programming
Speaker 1: computers in machine code is really really hard. I mean,
Speaker 1: imagine having to type in a string of tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of zeros and ones while you're trying to program
Speaker 1: a machine, and you know that if you make just
Speaker 1: one mistake, you mess up the whole program because the
Speaker 1: whole chain is screwed up after that. Heck, if you
Speaker 1: did make a mistake, it would be really hard for
Speaker 1: you to track down where you made the mistake in
Speaker 1: the programming. You would have to compare two different, very
Speaker 1: long sheets of zeros and ones, and you'd probably lose
Speaker 1: your mind. That's one of the big reasons computer scientists
Speaker 1: have developed various programming languages. The idea is that the
Speaker 1: programming language is something that's easier for human beings to
Speaker 1: work with, but machines can't understand programming languages without the
Speaker 1: use of something called a compiler. The compiler's job is
Speaker 1: essentially that of a translator. It takes the program that's
Speaker 1: been written in whatever programming language and converts the instructions
Speaker 1: into machine code so that the computer can process it.
Speaker 1: The compiler is essentially a middleman between the program and
Speaker 1: the processor. We describe programming languages by calling them stuff
Speaker 1: like level or high level. This refers to how closely
Speaker 1: the language resembles the machine code. So a low level
Speaker 1: programming language is really only a couple of steps away
Speaker 1: from machine code itself. It's much easier for a compiler
Speaker 1: to handle that kind of language, but it's much harder
Speaker 1: to program in. You have to frame your programming closer
Speaker 1: to machine code, but it's still easier than programming instructions
Speaker 1: than just ones and zeros. A high level programming language
Speaker 1: is modeled closer to how we would think in terms
Speaker 1: of a typical language. There are still rules you have
Speaker 1: to follow, and if you're not familiar with that particular
Speaker 1: language and you're looking at an example of it, it's
Speaker 1: not likely going to make a whole lot of sense
Speaker 1: to you. But it's much easier for humans to work
Speaker 1: with these kind of languages. However, it's less efficient for
Speaker 1: compilers to handle that and compile that into machine language.
Speaker 1: We call this adding layers of abstraction. The programming lay.
Speaker 1: WHIGE provides an abstract platform that represents the various tasks
Speaker 1: that the processor will ultimately carry out, and the gap
Speaker 1: between what the programming language says and what the processor
Speaker 1: does is the semantic gap. CISK and risk designs deal
Speaker 1: with this gap in different ways. A CISK design includes
Speaker 1: a lot of addressing modes and lots of different instructions.
Speaker 1: A RISK design has a much more simplified instruction set
Speaker 1: that can meet the requirements of user programs. It's really
Speaker 1: just two different methods to achieve a similar result. Depending
Speaker 1: upon the history you read, Acorn Computer slash Cambridge Processing
Speaker 1: Unit called their risk based design Acorn Risk Machines, or
Speaker 1: they called it Advanced Risk Machines. Most histories say that
Speaker 1: originally it was Acorn Risk Machines and only later changed
Speaker 1: to Advanced Risk Machines. But either way, the initialism for
Speaker 1: this technolog g became a r M or ARM. When
Speaker 1: we come back, i'll talk about how this technology would
Speaker 1: ultimately transcend the company that spawned it, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. Steve Ferber, Sophie Wilson, and Robert
Speaker 1: Heaton program the initial instruction set for the ARM processor
Speaker 1: in Basic. That's a programming language that originated back in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. Basic stands for Beginners all Purpose Symbolic
Speaker 1: instruction Code. It's a high level programming language that, as
Speaker 1: the name implies, simplifies things for beginner programmers. The Acorn
Speaker 1: team weren't beginners, but they wanted to keep instructions as
Speaker 1: simple as possible to optimize the processors. Their first effort
Speaker 1: yielded the ARM one processor That endeavor took two years
Speaker 1: of development, with the ARM one debuting in nine only
Speaker 1: debuting internally v l s I Technology, another company fabricating company,
Speaker 1: they actually produced the chip the working chips. The chip
Speaker 1: had fewer than twenty five thousand transistors on it and
Speaker 1: used a process with a resolution of three microns or micrometers.
Speaker 1: That's one millionth of a meter for comparisons sake, Today's
Speaker 1: Intel processors have more than a billion transistors and they
Speaker 1: use a fabrication process with a resolution of just a
Speaker 1: few nanometers, and a nanometer is one billionth of a meter,
Speaker 1: so we've definitely come a long way since the early eighties.
Speaker 1: The team learned a great deal through their experience of
Speaker 1: developing the ARM one, and rather than immediately go into production,
Speaker 1: the design team began to work on refining their product,
Speaker 1: creating the next generation of processors based on the architecture.
Speaker 1: They wanted to improve certain processes, and they added instructions
Speaker 1: for stuff like multiply and multiply and accumulate. They built
Speaker 1: in capabilities that would allow the processor to perform real
Speaker 1: time digital signal processing, a necessity if they wanted the
Speaker 1: processor to be able to handle processes meant to you know,
Speaker 1: generate sounds for example, which the company considered an important
Speaker 1: part of a computer's capabilities. They increased the number of
Speaker 1: transistors on the microprocessor from twenty five thousand from ARM
Speaker 1: one to thirty thousand for ARM two. The team also
Speaker 1: developed a coprocessor, which, as that name implies, is a
Speaker 1: processor that can work in concert with the primary processor.
Speaker 1: Coprocessors typically handle specific tasks. They're meant to kick in
Speaker 1: when something specific happens, and it offloads those tasks from
Speaker 1: the responsibility of the primary process sessor. So this would
Speaker 1: be kind of like having two people dividing up work
Speaker 1: among them, and one person handles a subset of chores
Speaker 1: and the other person has to do all the rest
Speaker 1: of the chores. Now, in this case, the coprocessor was
Speaker 1: powering a floating point accelerator. Ah, but that leads us
Speaker 1: to ask what is a floating point? Well, I'm sad
Speaker 1: to be the one to have to tell you this.
Speaker 1: Please set yourself down and and prepare yourself. Computers have
Speaker 1: a limited capacity. Computing memory is not infinite, and so
Speaker 1: we have to start making some concessions when we're working
Speaker 1: with numbers. Now, as you may be aware, some numbers
Speaker 1: can be really really big or really really small, and
Speaker 1: they might have a super long, perhaps even infinite number
Speaker 1: of numbers behind a decimal point. Computers can't cope with that.
Speaker 1: They have limitation on what they can handle. So we
Speaker 1: have to make some concessions, and floating points are one
Speaker 1: of the ways we make concessions. Now, at some point
Speaker 1: we have to cut off numbers, and when and where
Speaker 1: we cut off numbers depends upon what we're doing. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if we are making a tool like a rake,
Speaker 1: you know, just an old lawn rake, and you want
Speaker 1: the handle for this rake to be five ft long,
Speaker 1: you probably don't actually care if the handle comes out
Speaker 1: to be four ft eleven inches and some change, or
Speaker 1: five foot and a fraction of an inch that level
Speaker 1: of precision isn't really important to you. It needs to
Speaker 1: be five ft ish, but if it's not exactly at
Speaker 1: five ft it's not a deal breaker. But let's say
Speaker 1: you're building a transistor for a processor. Well, in that case,
Speaker 1: you're working in a very very very small frame of reference,
Speaker 1: and so the difference of a fraction of a meter
Speaker 1: represents a gargantu one difference. On the flip side, you're
Speaker 1: not likely to ever have to worry about distances of
Speaker 1: a centimeter. That would be way too big. So you
Speaker 1: just have to have a way to maintain accuracy relative
Speaker 1: to what you're doing. You have a different, you know,
Speaker 1: context for your work. This gets a bit more complicated
Speaker 1: when you need to work with both really big and
Speaker 1: really small numbers at the same time. For example, let's
Speaker 1: say you're a scientist and you're working with Newton's gravitational constant.
Speaker 1: That is a very small number that starts with a decimal.
Speaker 1: Then you have ten zeros before you get to the
Speaker 1: first non zero number, which is a six. By the way,
Speaker 1: you might also be working with the speed of light.
Speaker 1: That's a very big number, but the computer memory can't
Speaker 1: really handle number sizes that include that wide a spectrum
Speaker 1: of numbers, and that's why floating points are used, and
Speaker 1: they're sort of like using numbers and scientific notation. You've
Speaker 1: got a significant with contains the digit of the number
Speaker 1: or the digits of whatever number you're talking about, and
Speaker 1: you've got an exponent which tells you where the decimal
Speaker 1: point needs to be in relation to the first digit
Speaker 1: in the significant. So if I have a significant of
Speaker 1: one point seven and I have an exponent of six,
Speaker 1: it would be the same as if I wrote that
Speaker 1: number in the scientific notation as one point seven times
Speaker 1: ten to the sixth power, which is the same thing
Speaker 1: as one million, seven hundred thousand. These are all just
Speaker 1: different ways to represent the same value. So one point
Speaker 1: seven significant with an exponent of six is one million,
Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand. Likewise, if I had a significant of
Speaker 1: one point seven and an exponent of negative six, this
Speaker 1: would be the same as one point seven times ten
Speaker 1: to the negative sixth power or point zero zero zero
Speaker 1: zero zero one seven. By using floating points, we can
Speaker 1: simplify how we represent numbers without damaging the value of
Speaker 1: those numbers. And let's get around the limitations of computer
Speaker 1: memory and how many bits a processor can handle at
Speaker 1: a single time. We call the operations that processors perform
Speaker 1: on these types of numbers floating point operations, and we
Speaker 1: measure it in flops, which stands for floating point operations
Speaker 1: per second. A giga flop would be a billion floating
Speaker 1: point operations per second. The Japanese super computer Fugaku can
Speaker 1: reach more than four hundred fifteen peda flops. A pedal
Speaker 1: flop is a thousand million million floating point operations per second,
Speaker 1: So a pedal flop would be a one followed by
Speaker 1: fifteen zeros yauza. So the ARM to architecture included a
Speaker 1: coprocessor for floating point acceleration, not a full floating point process,
Speaker 1: but to accelerate floating point operation calculations, as well as
Speaker 1: the possibility of adding other coprocessors with the basic ARM architecture.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a sort of a modular design.
Speaker 1: This generation was called, fittingly enough, ARMED two, and the
Speaker 1: first product to market that featured the ARM two wasn't
Speaker 1: a fully fledged computer, but rather the ARM development system,
Speaker 1: which included the ARM processor, four megabytes of RAM, three
Speaker 1: support chips, and some development tools. So essentially this was
Speaker 1: a product meant for programmers. It wasn't like it was
Speaker 1: meant for your average end consumer. Meanwhile, at the company
Speaker 1: at large, things were not going so super well. Acorn
Speaker 1: Computers was in a bit of a financial crisis and
Speaker 1: an Italian company known for computer systems and office equipment
Speaker 1: in Europe called Olivetti ing s c. And I know
Speaker 1: I've butchered it, but Olivetti is what's best known as
Speaker 1: it swept in and it acquired the English computer company.
Speaker 1: At the time, Olivetti was reportedly unaware that within Acorn
Speaker 1: Computers there were engineers who are working on new processors
Speaker 1: because the original Acorn computers we're using processors made from
Speaker 1: other companies, so the acquisition would slow things down a
Speaker 1: little bit. That's one of the reasons why there was
Speaker 1: a delay between the development of the original ARM one
Speaker 1: processor and an actual Acorn computer system running on an
Speaker 1: ARMED two processor. However, the day did eventually come around,
Speaker 1: and that day arrived in n seven, and that is
Speaker 1: when Acorn Computers launched the Archimedes. It was a home
Speaker 1: computer running on an ARM two processor with a clock
Speaker 1: speed of eight mega hurts, meaning it would send out
Speaker 1: eight million pulses per second. I wish I could say
Speaker 1: that the Archimedes revolutionized computing right away, but that just
Speaker 1: wouldn't be true. The delays meant that Acorn Computers was
Speaker 1: way behind the chief competitor, which in seven was IBM,
Speaker 1: or rather computers running on IBM's design a k a
Speaker 1: IBM compatibles. While Acorn Computers was working on developing its
Speaker 1: ARM processor technology and then afterward as it sorted itself
Speaker 1: out post acquisition from Olivetti, the computing world was consolidating
Speaker 1: behind the IBM compatible approach. Apple's market share was already
Speaker 1: heading forward decline. At this point. The company had released
Speaker 1: the Macintosh computer. In four Steve Jobs had been ousted
Speaker 1: or had left in a huff. Reports differ on this.
Speaker 1: IBM had taken aim at dominating the office computer space
Speaker 1: and then expanded beyond to home computing. But IBM had
Speaker 1: also made some decisions that allowed some other manufacturers to
Speaker 1: build machines with essentially the same components as IBM's personal
Speaker 1: computers and licensed essentially the same operating system, allowing any
Speaker 1: company the chance to build their version of an IBM
Speaker 1: PC but offer it for a much more competitive price.
Speaker 1: IBM had effectively set its own course to ultimately withdraw
Speaker 1: from the home PC market further down the line, though
Speaker 1: that would take several more years. The point, however, is
Speaker 1: that the IBM design was firmly entrenched in the market.
Speaker 1: There were tons of options for machines, and more importantly,
Speaker 1: there was an enormous amount of software available that had
Speaker 1: been developed specifically for the IBM design of computers. The
Speaker 1: our Comedies, a computer with a totally different processor and
Speaker 1: a different operating system was just getting started in this market,
Speaker 1: and there was no enormous library of software to support that.
Speaker 1: System sales as a result were slow. I mean, what
Speaker 1: good is a computer if there's no software to run
Speaker 1: on the computer. You could program your own software, but
Speaker 1: that sort of approach tends to appeal to, you know,
Speaker 1: a super narrow sliver of the overall computer market. So
Speaker 1: it would take a few years for programmers to develop
Speaker 1: software for the ARM architecture and for the Archimedes platform
Speaker 1: to a point where it could stand as a worthy
Speaker 1: alternative to the IBM PC. And I want to be
Speaker 1: clear here, I'm not saying the Archimedes was a bad computer.
Speaker 1: It wasn't. It was just that it was starting at
Speaker 1: a point where it was at a huge disadvantage to
Speaker 1: the IBM PC, which had an enormous head start. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the R and D team with an Acorn was hard
Speaker 1: at work at the next generation of ARM architecture, which
Speaker 1: would be the ARM three, and man, it is so
Speaker 1: much easier to follow this naming convention compared to some
Speaker 1: other technologies, but don't get used to it, because before
Speaker 1: long things are going to get confusing again. So the
Speaker 1: ARM three saw further improvements in design, with an on
Speaker 1: chip data and instruction CASH and a four kilobyte capacity
Speaker 1: of that CASH Ohana a bide is eight bits. A
Speaker 1: kilo bite is one thousand bites, or really because the
Speaker 1: power of two properties, it's more properly one thousand, twenty
Speaker 1: four bites. Will get more into that later. Essentially, this
Speaker 1: meant that more instructions could load into the pipeline for
Speaker 1: the processors simultaneously, which sped things up considerably. In addition,
Speaker 1: the team was able to get a much faster clock speed.
Speaker 1: The previous generation ran at eight Mega hurts, but the
Speaker 1: ARM three hit twenty five Mega hurts. The first Acorn
Speaker 1: computers running on ARM three technology would launch in nineteen nine.
Speaker 1: The team also worked to build a version of ARMED
Speaker 1: two tech that had a lower power requirement than the
Speaker 1: standard armed to processors, and this became known as armed
Speaker 1: to a S Little A Big S. This design was
Speaker 1: aimed at filling a market need for companies that were
Speaker 1: building lower cost portable and handheld devices like communication hand
Speaker 1: sets or portable computers, and the team got as far
Speaker 1: as developing working prototypes of the chip, but never got
Speaker 1: to bring it to market. One thing that was working
Speaker 1: really well, however, was the general dedication to risk based architecture.
Speaker 1: The chips required less power than CISC based systems, and
Speaker 1: with the right software they were incredibly powerful and efficient,
Speaker 1: and they cost much less than the more complicated CISC
Speaker 1: bay systems did. As a result, more companies were getting
Speaker 1: interested in developing risk based technologies. The ARM family of
Speaker 1: processors was a clear candidate for that model, but not
Speaker 1: everyone was keen on the idea of relying on a
Speaker 1: technology that belonged to a specific computer manufacturer, that being Acorn.
Speaker 1: There was, however, a solution to this problem, and I'll
Speaker 1: explain what it was after we return from this quick break.
Speaker 1: Behind closed doors, a series of meetings had been pushing
Speaker 1: the idea of breaking the ARM technology division out of
Speaker 1: Acorn and into its own entity, its own company. Acorn
Speaker 1: itself was part of these discussions, and the idea would
Speaker 1: be that the ARM branch would spin off into a
Speaker 1: new company, and that company would then develop new ARM technologies,
Speaker 1: acting as a business to business enterprise. It would actually
Speaker 1: fabricate the technologies as well. It would be an original
Speaker 1: equipment manufacturer or o e M. That's a type of
Speaker 1: company that makes products that are used as components in
Speaker 1: products made by other companies under their own branding. The
Speaker 1: two other companies that were part of this discussion in
Speaker 1: addition to Acorn were v L s I Technology that
Speaker 1: was the company that had fabricated the original ARM one processor,
Speaker 1: and drumroll please, Apple Computers. Presumably, Apple was keen on
Speaker 1: making use of ARM based processors, but didn't want to
Speaker 1: put out computers that could be said to have Acorn
Speaker 1: computing technology inside them, spending off armwood sidestep that awkward fact. However,
Speaker 1: there is another explanation that isn't quite so, you know, petty,
Speaker 1: and this is that Apple had taken a keen interest
Speaker 1: in the ARM three processors in an effort to develop
Speaker 1: computers that could go up against the IBM compatible four
Speaker 1: D six generation, but the ARM three lacked an integrated
Speaker 1: memory management unit or mm U, and as such, Apple
Speaker 1: felt that the ARM processor design wasn't quite where Apple
Speaker 1: needed it to be. However, developing a new ARM processor
Speaker 1: with an integrated MMU was going to be expensive and
Speaker 1: Acorn Computers just didn't have the resources to do it itself,
Speaker 1: so it really necessitated a move to an independent spinoff
Speaker 1: that had more support behind it. So Acorn Computers would
Speaker 1: supply the design and engineering behind the development of the
Speaker 1: ARM architecture, primarily in the form of a workforce of
Speaker 1: twelve engineers v l S. I would supply the fabrication
Speaker 1: facilities to make physical chick and Apple would supply the
Speaker 1: cold hard cash needed to fund the whole thing. That's
Speaker 1: oversimplifying things a little bit, but generally that's how the
Speaker 1: arrangement worked. The new company was Advanced Risk Machines Limited
Speaker 1: a k a. ARM Limited. The main goal for the
Speaker 1: new company was to advance ARM microprocessors. This new company
Speaker 1: had its fancy schmancy headquarters in a barn in Cambridge, England.
Speaker 1: Typically with tech companies, I talk about starting out in
Speaker 1: a garage. But with ARM it was a barn. And
Speaker 1: so while our story started in the late nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: with Acorn Computers, some ARM histories really point to nineteen
Speaker 1: nine as the beginning of ARM. I think that ends
Speaker 1: up skipping some important early work. However, that's just my
Speaker 1: own personal opinion. Hermann Hauser of Acorn Computers slash Cambridge
Speaker 1: Processing Unit reached out to Robin Saxby to serve as
Speaker 1: the CEO of this new company. Saxby had come from
Speaker 1: Motorola and it worked closely with Acorn Computers back when
Speaker 1: the PCs the company made we're running on Motorola based chips.
Speaker 1: The first processor this new company developed was called wait
Speaker 1: for it, ARMS six. Wait I'm sorry, wait, hang on,
Speaker 1: that can't be right. Six? Hang up? Wasn't the last
Speaker 1: full processor the ARM three? What the heck happened to four?
Speaker 1: And five? Why did we jump to six? What is
Speaker 1: it with tech companies and the desire to leap over
Speaker 1: entire numbers when releasing new versions of products? You know,
Speaker 1: I I wish I had answers for these questions, but
Speaker 1: my research didn't pull up anything definitive. Now that's not
Speaker 1: to say there aren't answers out there. It's entirely possible
Speaker 1: that there is, and I just missed it. But based
Speaker 1: on what I could find, there was never any announcement
Speaker 1: for ARMED four or ARM five as planned commercial products,
Speaker 1: nor any record of an ARMED four or ARE five
Speaker 1: processor being produced, either as a potential product or even
Speaker 1: as just an internal prototype. Based on the information I
Speaker 1: can find, the fourth generation ARM processor was in fact
Speaker 1: the ARMS six, and the new company skipped four and
Speaker 1: five for reasons that are beyond my ken. As it were,
Speaker 1: one thing that definitely shaped the development of the ARM
Speaker 1: six was an intended use for the tech within an
Speaker 1: ambitious Apple product, the Apple Newton. Now a lot has
Speaker 1: been said of the Newton, much of it unkind and
Speaker 1: for arguably justifiable reasons. The Newton was meant to be
Speaker 1: a defining example of personal digital assistance or p d
Speaker 1: a s. In fact, the story goes that the Apple
Speaker 1: CEO of the time, John Scully, coined the phrase personal
Speaker 1: digital assistant to refer specifically to the Newton. It was
Speaker 1: in many ways a incursor to the iPhone, which would
Speaker 1: debut twenty years after the company had first started working
Speaker 1: on the Newton. So you could say that the Newton
Speaker 1: came out twenty years too early, and I think I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people would agree with you. The
Speaker 1: Newton had a tablet style form factor and it used
Speaker 1: a touch screen input with a stylus. Apple was pushing
Speaker 1: really hard for a device that could actually interpret handwriting.
Speaker 1: So theoretically you would be able to write on the
Speaker 1: tablet in normal handwriting and the Newton would interpret each
Speaker 1: letter and capture it in text on screen. And that
Speaker 1: was a super cool and innovative idea. And Apple really
Speaker 1: needed a processor that could power operations without requiring too
Speaker 1: much juice, because a handheld computing device isn't really that
Speaker 1: useful if it can only operate for an hour or
Speaker 1: so before it needs a recharge. Would that in mind?
Speaker 1: The ARM six micro architecture began to take shape with
Speaker 1: lots of decisions in the development guided by the knee
Speaker 1: eads of the Newton. The name of the family of
Speaker 1: ARM six microprocessors, because there were a few chips that
Speaker 1: fell under this designation, was the ARMS six macro cell.
Speaker 1: And I'll give a few of the changes that happened
Speaker 1: between the ARM three generation and the ARM six. For
Speaker 1: one thing, the process had become more precise. The ARM
Speaker 1: three micro architecture used a one point five micron process,
Speaker 1: whereas the ARM six shrank that down to point eight microns.
Speaker 1: So what does that mean, Well, it means that the
Speaker 1: individual components on the chip could be made much smaller,
Speaker 1: which also means you could fit more components onto a
Speaker 1: microprocessor without having to increase the size of the actual
Speaker 1: processor chip. This falls in line with an observation that
Speaker 1: Gordon Moore had made decades earlier, where he observed that
Speaker 1: market influences incentivized companies to develop new ways to cram
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller components onto a square inch of silicon wafer.
Speaker 1: The effect of this is that the number of transistors
Speaker 1: you could find on microprocessors would effectively double every two
Speaker 1: years or so. Now these days we tend to reinterpret
Speaker 1: this to say that a computer's processing power doubles every
Speaker 1: two years or so due to Moore's law, and it's
Speaker 1: really more of an observation, but that's a matter for
Speaker 1: another episode. The point I really want to make is
Speaker 1: that moving from a one point five micron process to
Speaker 1: a point eight micron process is pretty much in line
Speaker 1: with that observation, as the point eight micron components were
Speaker 1: just a little over half the size of the one
Speaker 1: point five micron version found in ARMED three microprocessors. In addition,
Speaker 1: the ARMS six increased the address space from twenty six
Speaker 1: bits to thirty two bits. Address space means the amount
Speaker 1: of memory that's set aside for a particular computational component,
Speaker 1: like a file or a connected device. Essentially, a computers
Speaker 1: processor uses memory addresses in order to access information stored
Speaker 1: within the computer's actual memory. It's how a processor can
Speaker 1: pull relevant information for whatever process it needs to perform.
Speaker 1: The term twenty six bit or thirty two bit tells
Speaker 1: us how much memory the system can address. Now, remember
Speaker 1: that a bit is a unit of binary information, either
Speaker 1: a zero or a one. So each bit can have
Speaker 1: one of two states or two values zero one, two states,
Speaker 1: and you can have twenty six bits with the twenty
Speaker 1: six bit system with that older are in three address space,
Speaker 1: and that meant that you had a maximum of two
Speaker 1: to the twenty six power number of address spaces. So
Speaker 1: that meant you can have a maximum of two to
Speaker 1: the twenty six power number of address spaces. That translates
Speaker 1: to more than sixty seven million values. However, a thirty
Speaker 1: two bit address space knocks this up to two to
Speaker 1: the thirties second power values, and that goes up to
Speaker 1: nearly four point three billion values. So you see how
Speaker 1: a relatively small increase in bit size can have a
Speaker 1: much bigger effect. It's not doubling or quadrupling, it's much
Speaker 1: bigger than that. This meant that the ARM six could
Speaker 1: map up to four Gibby bytes of memory. Gibby bytes.
Speaker 1: I said that correctly. This is a peculiar measurement, right,
Speaker 1: because I'm sure you've heard of gigabytes, but this is
Speaker 1: gibby bytes. Gibby g I b I means too to
Speaker 1: the power of thirties, So a gimba byte means one billion,
Speaker 1: seventy three million, seven one eight hundred four bytes. You
Speaker 1: can see how saying one give byte is more efficient.
Speaker 1: Isn't that helpful? Anyway? The ARM six micro architecture can
Speaker 1: map up to four of those bad boys in memory.
Speaker 1: A gimme byte, in case you're curious, is equal to
Speaker 1: about one point oh seven four gigabytes. The whole story
Speaker 1: behind the various binary prefixes, because there's also kidby, maybe
Speaker 1: and tabby and more. All that is really interesting, but
Speaker 1: I'll save that for some other episode. The ARM six
Speaker 1: was backwards compatible with the old ARM three architecture. It
Speaker 1: had a twenty six bit mode of operation that it
Speaker 1: could switch to instead of its thirty two bit. This
Speaker 1: helped avoid making the older software that had been designed
Speaker 1: for ARM three systems from going totally obsolete with the
Speaker 1: release of the new micro architecture. It had the integrated
Speaker 1: memory management unit that Apple wanted. It also had some
Speaker 1: new processor instructions, but I'm not going to go too
Speaker 1: far into the details, as I feel like it would
Speaker 1: largely be lost and we've got a lot more to
Speaker 1: say about ARM coming up anyway. The first Newton model
Speaker 1: launched in with an ARM six ten risk microprocessor, and unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it would ultimately be something of a clunker. The chief
Speaker 1: problem with the Newton was not the fall of the
Speaker 1: ARM processor. It was that the most anticipated feature, the
Speaker 1: handwriting recognition capability, just wasn't very good. There were lots
Speaker 1: of reviews that criticized the implementation of this feature, documenting
Speaker 1: times when the system performed poorly and just got stuff wrong.
Speaker 1: Fans of the cartoon sitcom The Simpsons might remember an
Speaker 1: episode where they made fun of this. The school bully,
Speaker 1: Nelson had one of his cronies take down the note
Speaker 1: beat up Martin on his Newton, but the device interpreted
Speaker 1: it as eat up Martha. So Nelson then grabs the
Speaker 1: Newton and throws it at Martin, thus fulfilling the prophecy. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the Newton had a troubled launch, which is putting it mildly,
Speaker 1: and it would transition into a troubled life cycle. The
Speaker 1: device failed to get a really good hold in the marketplace,
Speaker 1: even as new versions of the hardware were released, and
Speaker 1: upon his return to Apple, Steve Jobs would discontinue the
Speaker 1: Newton in n eight. Meanwhile, over at ARM, CEO Robin
Speaker 1: Saxby had a brilliant idea. He saw that depending on
Speaker 1: being a single source of fabrication for the ARM microprocessors
Speaker 1: is way too limiting. ARM needed more customers and would
Speaker 1: also need to meet the production needs of those customers.
Speaker 1: But being a small operation, this was a tough problem
Speaker 1: to be in you couldn't easily scale up. The solution
Speaker 1: was an interesting one. Saxby led the company toward moving
Speaker 1: to a more intellectual property approach to micro architecture. So
Speaker 1: rather than produce the chips themselves. ARM Limited would license
Speaker 1: the design and instruction sets of these chips out to
Speaker 1: other fabricators. They would become what is called a fabless
Speaker 1: chip designer. They didn't produce the hardware themselves. The other
Speaker 1: chip manufacturers could produce their own ARM microprocessors built on
Speaker 1: the license designs coming from ARM itself. This move would
Speaker 1: prove to be a game changer for the company. We're
Speaker 1: gonna leave off there for this episode. In our next episode,
Speaker 1: I'll pick up from that point forward, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: about how ARM evolved over the years and cemented itself
Speaker 1: as a huge player in the microprocessor space, as well
Speaker 1: as talk about the acquisition by in video, at least
Speaker 1: the proposed acquisition at the time of this recording, and
Speaker 1: what that means. If you guys have suggestions for future
Speaker 1: topics that I should cover on tech Stuff, reach out
Speaker 1: to me. You can do so on Twitter. The handle
Speaker 1: is text stuff H s W and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
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