A history of ARM

guest · Jan 18, 2023

A history of ARM, part 1: Building the first chip
By Jeremy Reimer @jeremyreimer - September 23, 2022

In 1983, Acorn Computers needed a CPU. So 10 people built one.
It was 1983, and Acorn Computers was on top of the world. Unfortunately, trouble was just around the corner.

The small UK company was famous for winning a contract with the British Broadcasting Corporation to produce a computer for a national television show. Sales of its BBC Micro were skyrocketing and on pace to exceed 1.2 million units.
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But the world of personal computers was changing. The market for cheap 8-bit micros that parents would buy to help kids with their homework was becoming saturated. And new machines from across the pond, like the IBM PC and the upcoming Apple Macintosh, promised significantly more power and ease of use. Acorn needed a way to compete, but it didn’t have much money for research and development.
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guest · Jan 18, 2023

A history of ARM, part 2: Everything starts to come together
By Jeremy Reimer @jeremyreimer - November 21, 2022

What had started as twelve people and a dream was now a billion-dollar company.
From the beginning, it was hard to get anyone to care about this amazing technology. A few months after the first ARM chips had shipped, Acorn Computers' Steve Furber called a tech reporter and tried to get him to cover the story. The reporter replied, “I don’t believe you. If you’d been doing this, I’d have known.” Then he hung up.

The future looked bleak—until a representative from another computer company walked through the door. A little company called Apple.
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guest · Jan 18, 2023

A history of ARM, part 3: Coming full circle
By Jeremy Reimer @jeremyreimer - January 17, 2023

In our series finale, ARM achieves its goal of bringing computing power to the masses.
It started, as did many things in the ARM story, with Apple.

Steve Jobs had returned, triumphantly, to the company he had co-founded. The release of the colorful gumdrop iMacs in 1998, an agreement with Microsoft, and the sale of Apple’s ARM stock had brought the company from near-bankruptcy to a solid financial footing. But Apple’s “iCEO” was still searching for the next big thing.
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