From Every Acorn ...

Introduction

Remember the time that Britain was great?

The 1960s, with the Beatles and the Stones? The 1970s, with the Pistols and The Clash? They were good, but, for a technophile, there was an even better time.

It was the beginning of the 1980s that saw the UK drive the computer industry. It was a time that Cambridge, UK, became the place that pushed the computing industry forward, and was the home of Sinclair Computers and Acorn. With the Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81, my first home computer, we saw computers becoming common place within the home, and which supported a massive 1KB of memory, with an upgrade of 16KB:

Sinclair's next release, in 1982, saw the amazingly successful ZX Spectum which had rubber keys, and 16K of memory which could be upgraded to 48K:

Both the ZX81 and Spectrum had horrible keyboards, and didn't quite feel like a proper computer, so it was left to the amazing BBC Micro Computer (made by Acorn) to show the way in how to create a high-quality home computer:

Unlike the ZX81, the BBC Micro computer had a proper keyboard and was cramped full of chips which could be programmed with BBC Basic.  Amazingly both the BBC Micro computer, with its 6502 processor, the ZX 81 and the Spectrum, with the Z80 processor, used 8-bit processors, but could still run games and a range of applications.

Many other classic computers of the time used the 6502 processor, including the Apple II. Their main competition, the IBM PC, entered the market with a 16-bit processor (Intel 8086). With the advent of the 16-bit microprocessor, Apple and Sinclair follow the Motorola 68000 microprocessor route, while the world fell in love with the Intel x86 architecture. Acorn took a different route to the rest, though.

Slipping market

After their great initial success, Sinclair Computers and Acorn both saw their  markets  eroding, through weak sales of future versions, and also by the IBM PC (released in 1981). At the tine, Sinclair (and Apple) went for the complex processors (such as the Zilog Z80, MOS Technology 6502, Intel 8086 and the Motorola 6800), which had lots of processor instructions. They had a complex method of programming (CISC - Complex Instruction Set Computing). Acorn, though, went for simplicity with RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing), as it offered faster operations, and simpler coding. Many remember at the time the vast increase in computing performance of the RISC processors against the CISC equivalent.

The original BBC Computer had used the 6502 processor, but Acorn moved to their  own ARM processor in the second version. In terms of performance, it blew the competition away, but, in terms of compatibility, it failed. So, as Sinclair's move into business computers failed because of the IBM PC, Acorn's market share started to slip too, especially as it failed to gain any traction in the business market. While they still held firm in the school/education market, the lack of software eventually made the BBC Computer look a risky option.

With the IBM PC, the industry, though, moved to the horrible x86 programming (using the Intel 8086 processor), which had segmented memory, and a difficult to use instruction set. Developers rush to produce software for the Intel architecture, and its adopt increased as the number of applications written for it increased. For Acorn, there was no rush to produce software for the new processor, and its market crashed within a short time.

Transputers

The 1980s was a great time for UK-based companies. Inmos, for example, showed a strong vision, and while other processors ramped up their clock rates, they could see the future of multiprocessors with their Transputer (transistor computer) architecture:

The Transputer also took the RISC route, and it allowed for programs to be split into sub-tasks which could be run on different processors, at the same time. This is basically how multi-core processors work on our modern computers. Unfortunately, at the time, Inmos lacked a strong development environment and marketing strategy, and its adoption in mainstream computer failed, as few people could see how to use the architecture to improve their systems. 

For me, I gained a PhD from it, as I modeled radio wave propagation on  transputers, and ran models over four processors, which ran in parallel. These days, we see massively parallel systems, with millions of processors, but in the 1980s running with four processors was a massive step forward.

Taking on the world

But it was the ARM processor that eventually allowed the company to thrive, with newer and faster versions, each which allowed them to move towards SoC (Systems on a Chip), processing faster architectures than with the ever increasing complexity of the Intel processors (80386, 80486, and Pentium). So, as the computing industry focused on the desktop market, there was an increase the speed of the processor, and where the devices consume increasing amounts of electrical power. ARM, though, moved into creating power-efficient processors, and which fitted perfectly into the evolving mobile phone market. Intel tried, belatedly, to scale their processors into the mobile market, such as with the Intel Atom, for example, but they struggled to scale their architecture in the way that the ARM processors did.

The ARM processors became extremely successful, and ARM Holdings discovered that they didn't even have to manufacture them anymore, and basically licenced their designs to other chip manufacturers. For this ARM Holdings design the core layout, and then retained the IP, which were then licenced it into a range of products, including into the Apple i-Phone.

So, by 2005, the ARM processor had a 98% share of the market for mobile phones, and, by 2010, there were over 6 billion devices using ARM processors, with a 95% share of the market. Recently this increased to over 10 billion devices created each year, and with over 60% of the mobile phone market (including for both Android and Apple products). Few UK products have ever had such as market share of a worldwide market, and few have ever created industry standards in the way that ARM have. With the ARM7 architecture (with the Cortex core), the designs were licenced to companies to integrate into their own systems.

Few UK design products have ever had such as market share of a worldwide market, and few have ever created industry standards in the way that the ARM architecture has. A great advantage for Arm Holding is that they basically just have to design and then licence their architecture (such as ARM-7) and core (such as the Cortex core). The architecture has since become a de-facto standard for mobile devices, with new designs offering improved power consumption and speed improvements.

End of an era

So, with the UK £ dropping like a stone after the UK EU Referendum, there were rich pickings to be had for take-overs of UK-based companies, and ARM Holdings looked most attractive for foreign investors. Then, for a country which took away a great deal of the market in electronics from the US, Japan stepped forward to move back into the leading position again. Overall, the US struggled in semiconductors against Japanese and then Chinese companies, but one area that they have continued to thrive in is processors.

So, on 18 July,an era ended with the purchase of Arm Holdings for £24.3 billion. It was a valuation that possibly completely undervalues a company which will drive the next generation: The Internet of Things, and where we will see billions of devices created with ARM as the core architecture used.

Conclusion

So goodbye to an era for a great UK company, but hopefully the new company will invest in their Cambridge operations, and continue to drive the Internet.

I must admit, I feel the computing industry is going back to its roots, and Linux, C++, Python and ARM machine code are now moving the clock back, and it feels so much better. The device of the future has an ARM processor, runs the Linux operating system, and is coded with Python. Computers in the past used to great fun, and they kinda lost their way, but they are back as fun devices again, with the R-PI showing the way that computers can be created for fun.

For Arm Holdings, you never quite know where your market will end up, so the key is to grasp opportunities as they come along. Well done to them, and the team in Cambridge ... you are stars!