StrongArm is a great chip for handhelds, settop boxes etc,
as several have written in this thread. You may also be interested
to know that Arm chips were first developed to power desktop machines.
The first was the Archimedes range from Acorn, back in 1987
(ARM first stood for Acorn Risc Machine, changed to Advanced when
Apple and VLSI were invited to invest about 1991), and
I'm using one of its successors, the Acorn RiscPC, to write this.
British schools have had Risc-powered desktop machines since 1987.
Acorn's operating system, RiscOS, is compact, lives on Rom complete
with GUI and the commonest fonts and a suite of applications, and
nimble. Lots of third-party applications including browsers, DTP,
Sibelius (music processor), photo retouching, ... All this experience
at programming the Arm gives Acorn an advantage in new markets for
the chip.
Jim Nagel
(Computer Shopper magazine UK, freelance) |
