ScuzzBlog: Diaries February 2022
Entry 8th February 2022: Post 1: Acorn arm twisting.
Acorn arm twisting.
If you have been following the recent attempt by NVIDIA to acquire
ARM from SoftBank you will appreciate that the deal is off, and now
there are plans to float Arm's shares on the stock market next year.
ARM which powered originally the Acorn was named at its birth as
the Acorn RISC Machine. It was changed to Advanced RISC Machine at
the request of Apple in 1990 when they joined with Acorn and VLSI
in a joint venture to develop the technology.
SoftBank acquired ARM in 2016 for a modest 32 billion dollars and
was in the throws of selling this to NVIDIA for 40 billion dollars
until some regulatory body stepped in. A number of corporations
were troubled by the purchase.
RISC on the other hand followed a different path and a less than
lucrative one. It seems to have been acquired by a company called
Pace Micro Technology who sold it to Castle Technology Ltd. This
was then acquired by RISC OS Developments who still own it though
RISC OS Open Ltd maintain the intellectual development rights.
More like custodians, as the OS is now open source.
So on one hand we have a 40 billion product and on the other hand
an open source OS worth probably very little.
So what happened to Acorn ? It was renamed in 1999 to Element 14
though still being owned by the Acorn Group PLC. It all starts to
get a little confusing with another company acquired named Cobolt 2.
And then the Acorn Group was renamed to Acorn Computer Group and
then subsequently renamed as Cobolt 1 in 2000. What happened next
I have no idea other than they were dissolved in December 2015.
OK so to my little Acorn tribute. I have to start by saying I do
not possess any of the earliest System 1 etc machines and I do not
have an Acorn Pheobe. So if anyone wants to contribute I would be
most happy to accept. I would also like a Sinclair MK-14 which is
kind of related , but hey.
Today was my time to check the RISCStation computer with its very
powerful ARM 7500FE processor. She fired up no problem and shall
now sit dormant until next year. Shame that. No idea who made the
machine but it carries the RISCStation logo.
That is me done for today other than to say I have a very large
oak tree in my garden. When I say large I mean bloody enormous.
Being in the New Forest it along with half a dozen smaller, yet
still massive oaks are subject to TPOs. An aerial view of the
location shows nothing but a tree canopy. They date from well
before the advent of the home computer, yet they too grew from
just a tiny acorn. I blame the squirrels.
Acorn arm twisting.
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