If you are a young and ambitious entrepreneur who must start from scratch, you have the opportunity to go back to any period in the IT industry and start from nothing. Which period would you choose? I think you will definitely choose the exciting seventies.
If the 1950s belonged to the era when semiconductor technology was born and tube computers were in full swing, and the 1960s belonged to the era when the semiconductor industry and mainframes in the commercial market emerged, then the 1970s will usher in the consumer market for the IT industry. The dawn. The companies that were born at this time are still in charge of the IT world.
In 1975, Paul Allen and Bill Gates started their business, and founded Micro-Soft the following year, and officially changed its name to Microsoft in 1978, which is today’s Microsoft.
On April 1, 1976, Steve Jobs and his childhood partner Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs’s parents’ home in California.
In 1979, Herman Hauser and Chris Kerry, who had just graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, UK, founded Acorn Computer Company.
(Acorn Computer Ltd logo)
There is no need to say much about the status of Microsoft and Apple today, but this Acorn computer made in the UK is not familiar to many people. If we say that Acorn computer is the predecessor of ARM company that provides system architecture for billions of mobile terminal chips today, everyone may feel a sudden enlightenment.
We know that Apple started the era of personal computers, but because of the unwillingness of Joe’s gang, it lost to companies such as IBM, Compaq, and Dell that took the Wintel alliance route. Apple’s Mac is still a niche in the PC era. representative. The Acorn computer has not been able to pass through its glorious age and live today, but it has left the company ARM for the world, and has become a surging computer that supports smart mobile terminals such as Apple and Android.The cornerstone of power.
In June 2020, Apple announced at WWDC 2020 that it would mount a self-developed chip with an ARM instruction set on Mac products to completely realize the connection between the mobile terminal and the PC-side underlying computing architecture. Apple’s choice seems to be a perfect cycle. You know, ARM was founded by Acorn Computer, Apple, and VLSI, a semiconductor foundry company.
In this issue, we will return to the historical scene of the birth of Acorn, and revisit the fate of ARM and the mobile era opened by the ARM processor architecture.
Wizards: Acorn Computer That Made ARM
Back in the early 1970s, when computers were only expensive equipment used by large enterprises and government agencies, the invention and production of personal computers was naturally the most fashionable thing for electronics enthusiasts at that time.
When Jobs saw the talent of Woz, who was a few years older, in making computers, he seemed to have identified the personal computer as the way. Finally, in 1976, they produced a prototype of the Apple No. 1 and successfully sold the first batch of Apple computers.
At the beginning, Jobs insisted on using Apple as the name of the company. It is said that for the first two years in India, he mainly relied on eating apples, and Apple became his source of strength; secondly, Apple will be on the phone in the future The first position of the yellow pages.
This idea of ”intelligence” seems to have inspired Hauser and Kerry, the two founders of Acorn. They named the company Acorn in 1979, which means Acorn, and they mainly hope that they His personal computer business has grown into a vibrant oak tree like an acorn. At the same time, they also hope that they will be ranked ahead of Apple on the phone yellow pages.
Who would have thought that such two companies named after “fruit” could become leaders in smart mobile terminals and mobile terminal processors.The giant of the domain.
At the time, everything had just begun. Whether it’s a technology enthusiast working with electronic devices in the garage all day long, or a PhD in physics and a marketing genius with no technical background trained in Cambridge, England, they can get involved in personal computers, which represents the promising direction of the IT industry at that time. It can be seen that the beginning of an industry is full of vitality and reckless atmosphere.
For Acorn, in addition to the two ambitious founders, the two characters who appeared on the stage were even more important. One was Sophie Wilson, Acorn’s first technician. When she joined Acorn, she had just graduated from the Department of Mathematics at Cambridge University. In short, she is the earliest developer of Acorn computer and the first developer of ARM architecture instruction set. The other is the legendary engineer Steve Forbar. He first took a week with Wilson to produce a prototype design of a microcomputer that satisfies the BBC. Later, he and Wilson were responsible for the development of the ARM processor, and he was responsible for the chip. the design of.
It is true that the times make geniuses, and geniuses make times.
The first generation of cheap personal computers launched by Acorn-Acorn Atom helped it initially open the home market. What really gave Acorn a firm foothold in the microcomputer market was the £1.3 million order from BBC Micro in 1981. This project is inseparable from the active struggle of Chris, and Herman’s successful internal mediation has successfully stimulated the potential of Wilson and Forbar. Before the BBC team came to inspect again, the two used the Acorn Proton version that was still under development at the time as a prototype, and spent five days and five nights to make the BBC Micro physical prototype. Since then, BBC Micro has been a great success, selling 1.5 million units in total, and won the Queen’s Award of Technology in 1984.
(A group photo of project participants at the BBC Micro commemorative event in 2008)
The opportunity to push Acorn to develop its own processor isAfter IBM launched the second-generation microcomputer for the commercial market in 1983, Acorn also intends to enter the microcomputer commercial market. However, the 2MHz 6502 processor originally used by Mostek on BBC Micro could not meet the new hardware requirements, and there was no processor on the market that satisfied Acorn.
It is said that Wilson and Fobar found all the chips that might be used at the time and thought that Intel’s 286 chip was not bad. When they offered to cooperate with Intel and wanted to obtain the authorization of the 286 chip, they were flatly rejected by Intel. The price of this rejection is that Intel has cultivated a nightmare opponent for the new century.
The balance of opportunity is tilted toward Acorn. At that time, the University of California, Berkeley, under the auspices of Professor David Patterson, proposed the “Berkeley RISC Plan” white paper. Wilson and Forbal were inspired by this and began to develop RISC-based 32-bit microprocessor chips for the new generation of BBC microcomputers.
(Sophie Wilson is introducing the ARM development process)
In October 1983, the ARM project was officially launched. Following the streamlining of the RISC architecture, Wilson quickly wrote the first ARM prototype using BBC Basic. After 18 months of research and development and testing, finally in April 1985, Acorn’s chip foundry VLSI produced the first ARM chip using the RISC instruction set. Here, the full name of ARM is Acorn RISC Machine.