You missed the best story ... The best one is where they are testing the ARM chp and they realise they forgot to power it (turned out it was running off voltage leak from the rest of the circuit) The ARM 1 was a co processer to the BBC mico, most of the archimedes you showed where ARM 2 . The first system on a chip ARMs were in the later 3000 series Archimedes ARM 250 (video VIDC/audio was on the same chip) Nintendo had ARM very early to make a Game Boy follow up but didn't use it because the origonal game boy sold so well they used it later for the color then SP . The thumb 16bit memory controller you mention I believe was initially intended for the Nintendo.
Actually, the chip used in the Newton was the ARM 610, which was the same processor that was eventually used in the RiscPC range of Acorn computers. By that time the majority of Acorns had been using the ARM3, which was basically an ARM2 with a cache on the chip which was used on the A3000 and A4 laptop, and the ARM250 which was the original SoC combining the main ARM2 processor and all the support chips on one piece of silicon which was used in the A3010, A3020 and the A4000. The picture you showed when introducing the Archimedes was actually the A3000 which was the first machine to actually DROP the Archimedes name.
@@ScorpioveA3000 was ARM2 at 8mhz A4000 A3010 and A3020 were ARM250 at 12mhz A5000 was ARM 3 at 25 or 33mhz RISC PC Was ARM 6 at 30mhz later ARM 7 at 40mhz later strongARM at 233mhz
The main take away from this account of UK micro computer history is that Sophie is not a woman but a trans dude - when first was learning about UK micro computer history thought it was really cool that a woman had a prominent role - creating BBC BASIC and other really cool things. But no - Sophie was born a man. So nothing there to chalk up for women - not so surprisingly, all these cool achievements were due to men.
ARM was initially Acorn Risc Machines. I worked at the BBC in the UK, bought a BBC Micro and then an Archimedes. I wrote about all of them in magazines. I wrote programming tutors for the Arc. I'm not a business person. That's why I'm not rich.
Thank you John. I am a developer and I lived through all of what you have so nicely now filled in for me. I remember RISC and its promise...but I did not know the twists and turns in your fascinating documentary. Fabulous thank you! I am British so it makes me doubly happy to know that a British woman with 800 lines of fantastic code, and a CEO with a brilliant business model never seen before, in both cases, have revolutionized the word, hand in hand with American smarts.
as a brit growing up at the time this is incredibly nostalgic and well researched. i always knew risc and *nix would live long through the wintel hype of latter years.
I remember getting the BBC Microcomputer as a 12-year-old at school. The computer networking labs were rapidly expanding into our schools. I was lucky enough to get get an Acorn for my birthday, we played the most boring games and used basic language. I am now fortunate to have worked for Hermann Hauser in some of his best new tech companies. Today, I am working with Professor Steve Furber in AI development for the betterment of mankind.
Man it’s crazy how different history could be if just one thing changed. ARM is so vital to so many things even outside of mobile. The routers that people use to provide internet all run off ARM, cars rely on ARM. Heck even laptops like the MacBook are reliant on ARM now.
Apple's MacBook are not reliant on ARM, only on ARM ISA (from years ago). ARM could disappear tomorrow that wouldn't change the ability for Apple to create new chips for a long time, and in fact this might be beneficial for them as no longer obligated to respect ARM ISA and IP.
@@uku4171once it becomes performant it will be popular since it doesn't have any fees or very little compared to what companies have to pay for arm. Google is already preparing Android for it.
My School, Woodlands High School, Falkirk, was the first in the world to be fully equipped with RISC powered Acorn Archimedes computers, I remember a whole lorry turning up with over 300 pc's, courtesy of the oil giant BP, who ran the local refinery, these RISC computers had capabilities we could only dream of, but one things stands out, a desktop Acorn 3010 rendering a fully 3d world in realtime, without having to pay over £14,000 for an SG server was staggering, and just pointed to how powerful RISC systems could be, and here we are, nearly 30 years later, with ARM dominating the chip market, simply because the underlying architure is so efficient, its no wonder APPLE dumped Intel, and took the modular RISC architure and molded it into the most efficient chips the world have seen to date.
Tbf modern X86 architectures are pretty similar to arm. I heard compilers are gonna ship mostly risc instructions to x86 now. Their optimized for risc operations more than cisc ones now.
In the early days (in my home country, Nigeria), we have an investment bank called ARM. In marketing for them we often encounter the ARM processor company but felt safe because the markers are different. Great video!
Yes , many F1 Teams are based in the UK & many products we used today were designed by British designers & UK based Recording Studios produced some of the High Fidelity recordings we enjoy today! Many British or UK actors , actresses & musicians helped many American Movie Studios to be as successful as of today! 🙏 Thank You So Much & God Blessed UK 🇬🇧 ... 🌷🌿🌎💜🕊🇬🇧
This was a rollercoaster through my childhood....had a sinclair spectrum, played with a BBC micro at school, then an acorn achimedes at school for which i did loads of word processing/ gaming, bought an olivetti pc.......fastfoward to 2000s and watched BBC micromen film/documentary about the clash between sinclair and curry and then only realised the significance !! ...great documentary !!
9:43 The Archimedes had an ARM2 processor, not ARM1. The ARM2 was slightly faster at 8Mhz compared to 6, and it had hardware multiplication and a fast interrupt mode.
A good video and I love to see this story told to a wider audience. I do think you have the emphasis slightly wrong in a couple of places though. Minor points that don't undermine the overall worth of this great video, but for what it's worth... It is fair to mention Sophie Wilson a lot, she was indeed the driving force behind the ARM instruction set (those familiar with her and her coding style can actually see some of her personality in the instruction set!). Having said that though Steve Furber played a big part in the logic level design and also in the design of the BBC micro. I think anyone in Acorn at the time (e.g. me) would consider the ARM design as primarily a joint effort between Sophie and Steve. Additionally you say that the actual chip was designed by VLSI. It was fabricated by VLSI but the physical chip layout was done at Acorn and the final tape-out then sent to VLSI for fabrication. Although there was of course a lot of cross-pollination of ideas, broadly speaking Sophie did the overall instruction set architecture, Steve Furber translated that to the higher level logic design, and then a small 3 (or was it 4; I forget) person in-house Acorn team led by Jamie Urquhart - located in the same building as Sophie and Steve (and me) - did the physical chip layout to be sent to VLSI for fabrication. The other small niggle that I have is that personally from the perspective of someone in the AR&D group at the time I'd say that you get the emphasis slightly wrong between Chris Curry and Hermann Hauser. For us (the technical folks) Hermann was always the driving force at least as far as the technology was concerned, often wandering round the building in the evenings chatting to people still there, and Chris Curry was seen as the sales and commercial guy with little input to the technical side of things.
Actually, the Apple Silicon processors are based on the ARM _instruction set,_ not on ARM's processor IP. The AS processors are home grown CPUs with ARM instruction set compatibility, but do _not_ use ARM designed CPU cores.
@@megatronskneecap I'm talking modern Apple Silicon processors - the term Apple Silicon processor was not even coined until the 'M' series of SoCs were introduced. AFAIK, Apple Silicon CPU cores are more efficient and faster than any ARM reference cores. Heck, I _think_ that ARMv6 was developed _at Apple's request_ since ARMv5 was unoptimizable due to the inability to schedule long instruction pipelines for use with an out of order execution unit.
Apple machines only seem to get their performance by tying everything together into a monolithic mass, so you can’t upgrade anything. Basically all their machines now are glorified laptops.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 They get their performance with incredibly deep instruction pipelines - 690 instructions for the A13's Firestorm - and an extremely wide CPU with a massive reorder buffer and eight decoders capable of executing up to eight instructions simultaneously. Using unified memory shared by all components of the SoC, the CPU shares memory with the GPU eliminating the Wintel graphics overhead of transferring data from CPU to graphics memory. Because the memory is along-side the chip, they achieve memory access speeds well beyond what you can get in the Wintel world which is pretty much limited to about 50 GB/sec. They also contain IP blocks sharing the same memory which are capable of hardware encode/decode of various video formats and carry with them a world class image signal processor and an integrated neural engine (which also shares the same memory) for machine learning tasks. There's nothing in the architecture relating to laptops - though they do make marvelous laptops. If you want to call them glorified _anything_ call 'em glorified game consoles which also take advantage of unified memory. The memory architecture of standard Wintel machines is based more on marketing silos than performance-directed structures - this allows mother board vendors, CPU vendors, GPU vendors, and memory vendors to independently sell you their products and ties them together with much lower performance interconnects.
@@megatronskneecap When the guy says Apple Silicon, he means the chips that Apple makes themselves. No shit previous Iphones are gonna use ARM lol. ARM doesnt make chips exactly, they just sell the ISA license.
The ARM1 was never released, it was the initial development prototype, and lacked a number of mathematical functions and lacked some commands, it was the ARM2 that appeared in the Archimedes in 1987 and continued to power the archimedes until the early 1990’s.
so the UK had world class company playing a massive part in the mobile phone industry and then the government came up with the fantastic idea of allowing it to be asset stripped.
Excellent storytelling, John. Viewers might get the impression that RISC was something new with Acorn. But it has a history, grounded in the Control Data Corporation's computers going back to the 1960s, like the CDC6600 that I used. My cheatsheet for reading memory dumps was handwritten on the blank side of a Hollerith punchcard, so short the instruction set was. These computers (which ultimately morphed into the Cray supercomputers) were all based on discrete component hardware (i.e., not integrated circuits). Very old school. Other commenters here have mentioned Hewlett-Packard's PA-RISC and the MIPS chips. ARM is inspiring because having carried the RISC torch forward in the face of entrenched CISC architecture as exemplified by intel's x86 family. Up with RISC, down with CISC!
Great video. I think it just forgot to mention the big participation ARM is getting in the cloud. The advantages are huge. For the same performance clients are getting almost half the price because of energy savings. I am really enthusiastic about this trend. I’m also curious about how Intel will react since the x86 architecture is fundamentally less efficient than ARM.
What a fascinating journey through the history of tech! I'm genuinely amazed by the way this video revealed the remarkable evolution of the tech industry and the pivotal role that ARM played in shaping it. The story of ARM's innovative processor designs and their impact on various devices, including Apple's, is truly remarkable. One key takeaway for me is how ARM's business model, which focuses on designing and licensing its processor designs rather than manufacturing, has allowed it to become a powerhouse in the industry. It's incredible to think that ARM's technology is at the heart of so many of the devices we use every day.
In the UK, Android continues to gain share over competitors. This year, 28.9 million people in the UK will use an Android smartphone, representing 59.4% of total UK smartphone users (48.7million). Currently, the iPhone is the second most popular device, representing 40.4% of users (19.7million)
This is the most valuable channel, I’ve learned crazy amounts of information and my mind is now blown by how big is the world and how much tech has helped, even for me that work daily with tech and animation Congrats man, this is gold
When Acorn went bust, I kept myself sane with the knowledge the ARM was in EVERYTHING. BBC BASIC - by Sophie Wilson is a great programming language by the way.
@@tortysoft technically ARM was so successful it was spin off into its own company, with apple ownership. So ARM is technically acorn still, especially when you remember ARM meant Acorn RISC Machine….they changed the acorn to advanced, but it’s acorn RISC machines really!! 🤯🤯🤯
i love the background music, it really works well with your story. some youtubers just add bg music to fill in, whoevers adding this understands the emotion of the parts your saying. cool
Roger Wilson designed the instruction set and the Basic interpreter. Steve Furber led the ARM hardware design team. They passed the cpu block design to the in-house VLSI team. Also we designed video controller (VIDC) and memory controller (MEMC) chips. There were about six of us. VLSI technology provided the design tools and manufacture. They did not design the chip.
Brings back memories. I had an A5000 and A340s in the lab and the unix one (A540?) in the lab. Then I got a special A5000 for home to go with my A3010 . The A5000 was STDs and originally Gareth from Simtecs. Then a RiccPC strong ARM with an Aleph1 pentium coprocessor in slot 2. I remember the news pad (like an iPad but before its time) What killed RiscOS as mainstream was the cost of Software. You even had to pay for a decent browser etc etc.
@@uku4171I’m guessing having the latest DirectX API versions, that’s really the only thing Windows on ARM lacks for New Technology (legacy drivers are not supported on ARM for compatibility reasons).
"On a per line basis [those 808 lines of code] that might be the most valuable code ever written." is crazy. My new goal for the next *checks notes* 122 work days, is to watch a John Coogan video every day. Let's see how far I get in this challenge lol.
ARM has done quite well of late. Microsoft and AWS (Amazon Web Services) now offer ARM as an alternative. As the video indicates, ARM rules all of mobile (and will for the foreseeable future). The general shift to high-level languages favors ARM. For example, Java programs (jar files) don’t have to be recompiled for ARM. The same holds for Python and other languages. By contrast, C/C++ compiles into binaries that run on x86 or ARM, but not both. However, ARM has lost out in one key area. That is AI. Nvidia, not ARM, dominates AI and will for the foreseeable future.
@@honkhonk8009 I don't think RISC-V is going anywhere soon. I see ARM all over the place. Smartphones are typically ARM based. AWS (Amazon Web Services) actually gives me a choice of using Intel servers or ARM servers. My kids have iPads. Of course, they are ARM based. The current generation of Macs use ARM. Arduino provides another example. Atmel, ARM, and Intel are supported. RISC-V is not.
@@peterschaeffer RISC-V is supported by Arduino and there are cips wich is implementing risc-v (Espressif esp32-c3, SiFive FE310, ..) that run on Arduino frameworks.
I love the backstory narrated by John. I knew about the ARM architecture being used by apple to lead the personal computing revolution but this is a great video to learn the backstory, thanks John!
Apple didn't use ARM architecture ""to lead the personal computing revolution" and they didn't lead this revolution , they were just a member of it . I would say IBM and clones leaded personal computer revolution . Apple used mainly PowerPC processors when it became relevant . ARM architecture was used later in mobile devices . Only now is Apple using ARM architecture for personal computers .
@@jamieangus-whiteoak3656 Can't you read? The woman indicated as an important figure in the history of computer science (Sophie Wilson) is actually a man. I think it's funny.
The ARM1 was never put in a product. The Archimedes was based on the ARM2. The model you showed first was actually a BBC A3000, which came along in 1989 and did have decent penetration into British schools.
I actually had a ZX-80. I bought it in 1979 as I remember it. Had Z80 processor and 1k RAM, persistent storage: interface to a home tape recorder, screen: TV antenna outlet Language: Basic If you wrote a large enough program, the code interfered with the screen buffer effectively erasing what was shown on the screen. 😂😂😂😂 But it sure worked There was two options: assemble it by yourself, or pre-assembled.
We were the proud owners of a Acorn Computer at our Primary/Elementary school in the mid 90s this was one of the first experiences with a computer for us, everyone in our class loved it.
I still have an old Acorn Archimedes A440 in my loft, using the first Arm silicone (or as it was originally know Acorn Risk Machine) … and risc OS was stunning for the time
CMOS (Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) is a chip fabrication technique that results in circuits that hold their state (excluding a bit of seepage) when there is no power. Historically used for small memory chips that hold a computers settings (CMOS / BIOS settings). A battery of SOME type compensates for the seepage, to preserve the CMOS values when there is no mains power. The battery being known as the CMOS battery. CMOS has nothing to do with the batteries composition.
Plot twist: The guy that invented RISC, David Patterson, is the vice chair of the board of directors of the RISC-V Foundation. RISC-V may end up unseating ARM
Steve Furbar did the architecture and the electronics. Roger Wilson (his name before his sex change) did the instruction set. This video does Furbar an injustice. do some fact checking you will then understand Furbur's part in all this then release a updated fact correct version of your video.
Steve Furbar, in addition to the physical design for ARM, also did the hardware side of the Acorn Atom, Proton, and BBC Micro. (Roger | Sophie) writing the BASIC, COMAL, ... language interpreters. The likes of Hugo Tyson writing the "advanced disk filing system" used by the BBC, Archimedes, RISC-PC, ... and a test suite, with notorious error messages, for the logical and physical designs of the the pair (Digital's engineers didn't appreciate the automated, profanity laden, critique of their best efforts). Also the ARM 1 shipped in just a developers evaluation kit / 2nd processor (sidecar) for the BBC micro range. The Archimedes initially shipping with an 8MHz ARM2, in 1987, and 25+ MHz ARM3 silicon, from 1989. The follow on RISC-PC shipped with ARM6, ARM7, and Digital StrongARM CPU's, at up-to 233 MHz, from 1993. Anyway Johnny Ive was the one who saved Apple, through his novel iMac, iPod, iPhone, ... designs. The ARM based iPod later bringing in more revenue, than the sale of ARM stock.
As a layman I never really took much notice of ARM when I was either building computers and having a mobile phone and your explanation has now filled me in - thanks. I am also proud that a fellow English person (political correctness here) designed this technology in the first place. I now live in Australia - since 1978 and had no idea of this technology being so important.
Kinda crazy to think about the direct lineage between the computers of my youth in the 1980s and early 1990s to the iPhone I’m watching this on now. Both the Acorn BBC Model B and Archimedes saw some success in Australia within the education system. I first used a mouse, GUI and inkjet printer on an A3000. Ironically it was also the first system I used for CAD drafting too (still doing it 25 years later 😂).
We’ll put together. IMHO someone else would have developed a suitable RISC processor if Acorn hadn’t. Also there should be an asterisk on call the 8088 at 16-bit processor since it only had an 8-bit data path. The 8086 was a true 16-bit processor.
I dispute the notion that Apple would not be what it is today absent the ARM. The need for small microprocessors/controllers would have outed as a different product. Not mentioned in this video is that ARM processors are in plain sight unrecognized: all sorts of devices use ARM processors, some of them in packages the size of a match head. Thermostats, garage door controllers, routers, ... an endless list. What's with the audio echo on this video?
Its not fair to say that the iPhone is British. RISC technology was primarily developed in the USA not Britain. ARM just happened to develop RISC for mobile purposes, and many US companies use it for internet servers, etc.
My BBC B was amazing vastly more able than its siblings with a proper depth to its OS. It's fast ram and 2mhz 6502, easily matched early 16bit machines in performance too. And then it had the most powerful and fast Basic ever designed to go with it 😊. As for the ARM I doubt it would have found itself into new neiches without the fading off the Acorn line.
Apple made right bet back then and it pays very well now with excellent results. They both helped each other when it was most needed, this is a partnership done right.
I don't see the symbiosis. ARM was working with all phone companies before the iphone and cotinued working with all smartphone and tablet companies after.
You missed the best story ...
The best one is where they are testing the ARM chp and they realise they forgot to power it (turned out it was running off voltage leak from the rest of the circuit)
The ARM 1 was a co processer to the BBC mico, most of the archimedes you showed where ARM 2 .
The first system on a chip ARMs were in the later 3000 series Archimedes ARM 250 (video VIDC/audio was on the same chip)
Nintendo had ARM very early to make a Game Boy follow up but didn't use it because the origonal game boy sold so well they used it later for the color then SP .
The thumb 16bit memory controller you mention I believe was initially intended for the Nintendo.
The Game Boy Color did not use an ARM chip but the Game Boy Advance and onward did.
Actually, the chip used in the Newton was the ARM 610, which was the same processor that was eventually used in the RiscPC range of Acorn computers. By that time the majority of Acorns had been using the ARM3, which was basically an ARM2 with a cache on the chip which was used on the A3000 and A4 laptop, and the ARM250 which was the original SoC combining the main ARM2 processor and all the support chips on one piece of silicon which was used in the A3010, A3020 and the A4000. The picture you showed when introducing the Archimedes was actually the A3000 which was the first machine to actually DROP the Archimedes name.
@@ScorpioveA3000 was ARM2 at 8mhz
A4000 A3010 and A3020 were ARM250 at 12mhz
A5000 was ARM 3 at 25 or 33mhz
RISC PC Was ARM 6 at 30mhz later ARM 7 at 40mhz later strongARM at 233mhz
The main take away from this account of UK micro computer history is that Sophie is not a woman but a trans dude - when first was learning about UK micro computer history thought it was really cool that a woman had a prominent role - creating BBC BASIC and other really cool things. But no - Sophie was born a man. So nothing there to chalk up for women - not so surprisingly, all these cool achievements were due to men.
@@TheSulross how on earth is that the "main take away"? At most it is an interesting factoid.
ARM was initially Acorn Risc Machines.
I worked at the BBC in the UK, bought a BBC Micro and then an Archimedes. I wrote about all of them in magazines. I wrote programming tutors for the Arc. I'm not a business person. That's why I'm not rich.
Thank you John. I am a developer and I lived through all of what you have so nicely now filled in for me. I remember RISC and its promise...but I did not know the twists and turns in your fascinating documentary. Fabulous thank you! I am British so it makes me doubly happy to know that a British woman with 800 lines of fantastic code, and a CEO with a brilliant business model never seen before, in both cases, have revolutionized the word, hand in hand with American smarts.
The women at that time was a man: Roger Wilson.
ARM name originally meant Acorn Risc Machine before the arm company was founded and the name becoming Advance Risc Machine
as a brit growing up at the time this is incredibly nostalgic and well researched. i always knew risc and *nix would live long through the wintel hype of latter years.
this channel is my new obsession mahn
Yep 🤘🤘🤘
Totally agree
Same
Same 😂
Facts
I remember getting the BBC Microcomputer as a 12-year-old at school. The computer networking labs were rapidly expanding into our schools. I was lucky enough to get get an Acorn for my birthday, we played the most boring games and used basic language. I am now fortunate to have worked for Hermann Hauser in some of his best new tech companies. Today, I am working with Professor Steve Furber in AI development for the betterment of mankind.
Is that in the University or in industry?
My dad was an IT teacher. We always had tonnes of them around. There were some great games on the BBC. I loved Repton :)
There are those who will use AI for malicious purposes so please don't be naive by saying stuff like "for the betterment of humankind"
WoW!
@@kiyoponnnWhy be Malicious? Everyone is entitled to express oneself. You are the one with a problem!
That's why my phone comes with chips and not french fries.
I love that !
😂 ACorn(y) quip if ever I heard one.
And it use an arm processor
Man it’s crazy how different history could be if just one thing changed. ARM is so vital to so many things even outside of mobile. The routers that people use to provide internet all run off ARM, cars rely on ARM. Heck even laptops like the MacBook are reliant on ARM now.
Do you think RISC-V could become nearly as popular as ARM? Would there be downsides?
Have a look at a vector processor.
I think as many home routers run MIPS as ARM. Fundamentally if it wasn't ARM, it would have been Super-H or MIPS or a combination of both.
Apple's MacBook are not reliant on ARM, only on ARM ISA (from years ago).
ARM could disappear tomorrow that wouldn't change the ability for Apple to create new chips for a long time, and in fact this might be beneficial for them as no longer obligated to respect ARM ISA and IP.
@@uku4171once it becomes performant it will be popular since it doesn't have any fees or very little compared to what companies have to pay for arm. Google is already preparing Android for it.
My School, Woodlands High School, Falkirk, was the first in the world to be fully equipped with RISC powered Acorn Archimedes computers, I remember a whole lorry turning up with over 300 pc's, courtesy of the oil giant BP, who ran the local refinery, these RISC computers had capabilities we could only dream of, but one things stands out, a desktop Acorn 3010 rendering a fully 3d world in realtime, without having to pay over £14,000 for an SG server was staggering, and just pointed to how powerful RISC systems could be, and here we are, nearly 30 years later, with ARM dominating the chip market, simply because the underlying architure is so efficient, its no wonder APPLE dumped Intel, and took the modular RISC architure and molded it into the most efficient chips the world have seen to date.
Do you think RISC-V could become nearly as popular or overtake ARM?
Tbf modern X86 architectures are pretty similar to arm.
I heard compilers are gonna ship mostly risc instructions to x86 now. Their optimized for risc operations more than cisc ones now.
Correction. ARM = Acorn RISC Machine. They changed it to Advanced later on.
- and did their very best to hide the original A name.
I used a BBC Micro in secondary school. So many great memories coding and playing games.
In the early days (in my home country, Nigeria), we have an investment bank called ARM. In marketing for them we often encounter the ARM processor company but felt safe because the markers are different. Great video!
Cool to see another Nigerian in this corner of the internet❤
I'm Ghannaian
I’m both 🙂
Funny hearing it called a zee x 81...it was the zed x 81 😊
It’s just localization.
Yes , many F1 Teams are based in the UK & many products we used today were designed by British designers & UK based Recording Studios produced some of the High Fidelity recordings we enjoy today! Many British or UK actors , actresses & musicians helped many American Movie Studios to be as successful as of today! 🙏 Thank You So Much & God Blessed UK 🇬🇧 ... 🌷🌿🌎💜🕊🇬🇧
This was a rollercoaster through my childhood....had a sinclair spectrum, played with a BBC micro at school, then an acorn achimedes at school for which i did loads of word processing/ gaming, bought an olivetti pc.......fastfoward to 2000s and watched BBC micromen film/documentary about the clash between sinclair and curry and then only realised the significance !!
...great documentary !!
9:43 The Archimedes had an ARM2 processor, not ARM1. The ARM2 was slightly faster at 8Mhz compared to 6, and it had hardware multiplication and a fast interrupt mode.
Great video, but you should have mentioned Steve Furber, the original chip designer
Highest quality and good content as always John.
Compliments vs constructive criticism. He knows it's good. How can it be better?
@@KaiseruSoze can it get better than this?
Cambridge (England), the birthplace of the Raspberry Pi, the biggest selling British computer of all.
People world wide use Raspberry Pi’s.
@@megatronskneecap They do indeed
The latest-generation Raspberry Pi 5 has been launched.
and its also made in wales not china
Also WWW
No huss, no fuss, to the point with no super-complicated tech jargons. Excellent video explaining the story a tech company.
A good video and I love to see this story told to a wider audience. I do think you have the emphasis slightly wrong in a couple of places though. Minor points that don't undermine the overall worth of this great video, but for what it's worth...
It is fair to mention Sophie Wilson a lot, she was indeed the driving force behind the ARM instruction set (those familiar with her and her coding style can actually see some of her personality in the instruction set!). Having said that though Steve Furber played a big part in the logic level design and also in the design of the BBC micro. I think anyone in Acorn at the time (e.g. me) would consider the ARM design as primarily a joint effort between Sophie and Steve.
Additionally you say that the actual chip was designed by VLSI. It was fabricated by VLSI but the physical chip layout was done at Acorn and the final tape-out then sent to VLSI for fabrication. Although there was of course a lot of cross-pollination of ideas, broadly speaking Sophie did the overall instruction set architecture, Steve Furber translated that to the higher level logic design, and then a small 3 (or was it 4; I forget) person in-house Acorn team led by Jamie Urquhart - located in the same building as Sophie and Steve (and me) - did the physical chip layout to be sent to VLSI for fabrication.
The other small niggle that I have is that personally from the perspective of someone in the AR&D group at the time I'd say that you get the emphasis slightly wrong between Chris Curry and Hermann Hauser. For us (the technical folks) Hermann was always the driving force at least as far as the technology was concerned, often wandering round the building in the evenings chatting to people still there, and Chris Curry was seen as the sales and commercial guy with little input to the technical side of things.
Actually, the Apple Silicon processors are based on the ARM _instruction set,_ not on ARM's processor IP.
The AS processors are home grown CPUs with ARM instruction set compatibility, but do _not_ use ARM designed CPU cores.
The first A5 processor in the iPhone 4 was entirely ARM based. Along with the Samsung processors in the iPhone 2G to 3GS.
@@megatronskneecap I'm talking modern Apple Silicon processors - the term Apple Silicon processor was not even coined until the 'M' series of SoCs were introduced.
AFAIK, Apple Silicon CPU cores are more efficient and faster than any ARM reference cores.
Heck, I _think_ that ARMv6 was developed _at Apple's request_ since ARMv5 was unoptimizable due to the inability to schedule long instruction pipelines for use with an out of order execution unit.
Apple machines only seem to get their performance by tying everything together into a monolithic mass, so you can’t upgrade anything. Basically all their machines now are glorified laptops.
@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 They get their performance with incredibly deep instruction pipelines - 690 instructions for the A13's Firestorm - and an extremely wide CPU with a massive reorder buffer and eight decoders capable of executing up to eight instructions simultaneously.
Using unified memory shared by all components of the SoC, the CPU shares memory with the GPU eliminating the Wintel graphics overhead of transferring data from CPU to graphics memory. Because the memory is along-side the chip, they achieve memory access speeds well beyond what you can get in the Wintel world which is pretty much limited to about 50 GB/sec.
They also contain IP blocks sharing the same memory which are capable of hardware encode/decode of various video formats and carry with them a world class image signal processor and an integrated neural engine (which also shares the same memory) for machine learning tasks.
There's nothing in the architecture relating to laptops - though they do make marvelous laptops. If you want to call them glorified _anything_ call 'em glorified game consoles which also take advantage of unified memory. The memory architecture of standard Wintel machines is based more on marketing silos than performance-directed structures - this allows mother board vendors, CPU vendors, GPU vendors, and memory vendors to independently sell you their products and ties them together with much lower performance interconnects.
@@megatronskneecap When the guy says Apple Silicon, he means the chips that Apple makes themselves.
No shit previous Iphones are gonna use ARM lol.
ARM doesnt make chips exactly, they just sell the ISA license.
I was born in Sheffield in 1979 and at school we had a bbc micro I used all the time! We had an MSX at home to play games and before that a ROWTRON!
British names are s understated. "Winter of Discontent". "The Troubles". Haha.
The ARM1 was never released, it was the initial development prototype, and lacked a number of mathematical functions and lacked some commands, it was the ARM2 that appeared in the Archimedes in 1987 and continued to power the archimedes until the early 1990’s.
The ARM1 was released as part of the ARM Evaluation System: a second processor expansion for the BBC Micro.
That was the one product for which I did not write a review@@paul_boddie
so the UK had world class company playing a massive part in the mobile phone industry and then the government came up with the fantastic idea of allowing it to be asset stripped.
Excellent storytelling, John. Viewers might get the impression that RISC was something new with Acorn. But it has a history, grounded in the Control Data Corporation's computers going back to the 1960s, like the CDC6600 that I used. My cheatsheet for reading memory dumps was handwritten on the blank side of a Hollerith punchcard, so short the instruction set was. These computers (which ultimately morphed into the Cray supercomputers) were all based on discrete component hardware (i.e., not integrated circuits). Very old school.
Other commenters here have mentioned Hewlett-Packard's PA-RISC and the MIPS chips. ARM is inspiring because having carried the RISC torch forward in the face of entrenched CISC architecture as exemplified by intel's x86 family. Up with RISC, down with CISC!
Interesting comment, thx!
Great video. I think it just forgot to mention the big participation ARM is getting in the cloud. The advantages are huge. For the same performance clients are getting almost half the price because of energy savings. I am really enthusiastic about this trend. I’m also curious about how Intel will react since the x86 architecture is fundamentally less efficient than ARM.
What a fascinating journey through the history of tech! I'm genuinely amazed by the way this video revealed the remarkable evolution of the tech industry and the pivotal role that ARM played in shaping it. The story of ARM's innovative processor designs and their impact on various devices, including Apple's, is truly remarkable. One key takeaway for me is how ARM's business model, which focuses on designing and licensing its processor designs rather than manufacturing, has allowed it to become a powerhouse in the industry. It's incredible to think that ARM's technology is at the heart of so many of the devices we use every day.
John is epic with his titles 😁
In the UK, Android continues to gain share over competitors. This year, 28.9 million people in the UK will use an Android smartphone, representing 59.4% of total UK smartphone users (48.7million). Currently, the iPhone is the second most popular device, representing 40.4% of users (19.7million)
This is the most valuable channel, I’ve learned crazy amounts of information and my mind is now blown by how big is the world and how much tech has helped, even for me that work daily with tech and animation
Congrats man, this is gold
John Coogan: Your iPhone Is Secretly British
The British: We know nothing about that!
I’ve known since I was a kid! Computer enthusiasts know! 🤯🤯🤯
You might think that, I couldn't possibly comment.
When Acorn went bust, I kept myself sane with the knowledge the ARM was in EVERYTHING. BBC BASIC - by Sophie Wilson is a great programming language by the way.
@@tortysoft technically ARM was so successful it was spin off into its own company, with apple ownership. So ARM is technically acorn still, especially when you remember ARM meant Acorn RISC Machine….they changed the acorn to advanced, but it’s acorn RISC machines really!! 🤯🤯🤯
As you may see, I said that too.@@hanniffydinn6019
i love the background music, it really works well with your story.
some youtubers just add bg music to fill in, whoevers adding this understands the emotion of the parts your saying. cool
It's secretly British but then all semiconductors are secretly Polish because of Jan Czochralski
A fruit machine is just the English name for a slot machine.
Roger Wilson designed the instruction set and the Basic interpreter. Steve Furber led the ARM hardware design team. They passed the cpu block design to the in-house VLSI team. Also we designed video controller (VIDC) and memory controller (MEMC) chips. There were about six of us. VLSI technology provided the design tools and manufacture. They did not design the chip.
Brings back memories. I had an A5000 and A340s in the lab and the unix one (A540?) in the lab. Then I got a special A5000 for home to go with my A3010 . The A5000 was STDs and originally Gareth from Simtecs. Then a RiccPC strong ARM with an Aleph1 pentium coprocessor in slot 2.
I remember the news pad (like an iPad but before its time)
What killed RiscOS as mainstream was the cost of Software. You even had to pay for a decent browser etc etc.
Ummm but does everyone forget Apple helped start ARM Holdings when they made the Newton and helped save Apple and ARM.
"They never made a single chip". I think they used to make chips in the Acorn era. Being fabless is also kind of normal in this sector.
One of the best video games ever - Elite, was originally released on BBC Micro.
And the best version is on the Archimedes.
Micro men is an excellent docudrama about this amazing era! 🤯🤯🤯😎😎😎👍👍👍
Thanks for the story, will be interesting to see if Microsoft will fully support ARM in the future.
windows supports arm?
What do you mean by "fully support"?
@@uku4171only a few third party apps are natively recompiled for their arm os.
@@uku4171I’m guessing having the latest DirectX API versions, that’s really the only thing Windows on ARM lacks for New Technology (legacy drivers are not supported on ARM for compatibility reasons).
Yes 1979 in the UK was very important, I was born in that year in Cambridge.
Thatcher was awful. She's the reason fiber optic broadband wasn't mainstream.
Thats incredible. ARM just took over one of the most important pieces of any kind of computer. Great video as always, John. I keep coming back.
Jonathan 'Jonny' Ive, the guy who designed and developed the iPod and iPhone (both powered by ARM) is also a Brit.
He designed the skin or looks not the inner working
Apple already released a computer with a processor by a direct competitor: MOS Technologies, owned by Commodore for the 6502.
The apple i had been on sale for a few months when Commodore bought MOS.
STM32 is ARM and is STM32 is everywhere, the king of IoT
"On a per line basis [those 808 lines of code] that might be the most valuable code ever written." is crazy. My new goal for the next *checks notes* 122 work days, is to watch a John Coogan video every day. Let's see how far I get in this challenge lol.
easier binge it in like 2 weekends lol
So basically Japanese company now own ARM via Softbank so it's a Japanese company now.
ARM has done quite well of late. Microsoft and AWS (Amazon Web Services) now offer ARM as an alternative. As the video indicates, ARM rules all of mobile (and will for the foreseeable future). The general shift to high-level languages favors ARM. For example, Java programs (jar files) don’t have to be recompiled for ARM. The same holds for Python and other languages. By contrast, C/C++ compiles into binaries that run on x86 or ARM, but not both. However, ARM has lost out in one key area. That is AI. Nvidia, not ARM, dominates AI and will for the foreseeable future.
Yeah but RISCV prolly would be the future tbh.
ARM and RISCV dont differ by that much so the translation isnt that insane.
@@honkhonk8009 I don't think RISC-V is going anywhere soon. I see ARM all over the place. Smartphones are typically ARM based. AWS (Amazon Web Services) actually gives me a choice of using Intel servers or ARM servers. My kids have iPads. Of course, they are ARM based. The current generation of Macs use ARM. Arduino provides another example. Atmel, ARM, and Intel are supported. RISC-V is not.
@@peterschaeffer RISC-V is supported by Arduino and there are cips wich is implementing risc-v (Espressif esp32-c3, SiFive FE310, ..) that run on Arduino frameworks.
Anyone in secondary school in the 90’s remembers IT lessons on a BBC micro!
I don't know what it is about the sound but your voice is super boomy and vibrates the hell out of my speakers.
My first computer was a Sinclair Zx80 then the Spectrum great learning machines 🇦🇺
I’m in awe of Sophie Wilson. What an engineer!
My dream came true, when I started working for this amazing company. ❤
I love the backstory narrated by John. I knew about the ARM architecture being used by apple to lead the personal computing revolution but this is a great video to learn the backstory, thanks John!
Apple didn't use ARM architecture ""to lead the personal computing revolution" and they didn't lead this revolution , they were just a member of it . I would say IBM and clones leaded personal computer revolution .
Apple used mainly PowerPC processors when it became relevant . ARM architecture was used later in mobile devices .
Only now is Apple using ARM architecture for personal computers .
It's funny that the most important woman in this story is a man. ;)
@@nnnnnn3647 and your point is exactly…?
@@jamieangus-whiteoak3656 Can't you read? The woman indicated as an important figure in the history of computer science (Sophie Wilson) is actually a man.
I think it's funny.
Ive worked in Robin saxbys apartment in Liverpool. Cool place 3 floors. For some reason we called him Mr Microchip. Now i know why 😀 cool video ✌🏼
The macbook M1 is a revolutionary product, which makes me feel sorry ARM chips didn't enter main computer market years earlier!
Just wait for the M3...
My BBC Micro (6502) still works - I think.
@@tortysoftthey said wait m2 and nothing will happen.
Announcement tomorrow...30/10/23@@Teluric2
This is true but don’t forget ASML that makes the equipment for producing this Micropocesors Netherland Company
The ARM1 was never put in a product. The Archimedes was based on the ARM2. The model you showed first was actually a BBC A3000, which came along in 1989 and did have decent penetration into British schools.
great show ... a bunch of stuff I vaguely heard about but didn't understand the connections
so satisfying to hear it all put together like this
I actually had a ZX-80. I bought it in 1979 as I remember it. Had Z80 processor and 1k RAM, persistent storage: interface to a home tape recorder, screen: TV antenna outlet
Language: Basic
If you wrote a large enough program, the code interfered with the screen buffer effectively erasing what was shown on the screen.
😂😂😂😂
But it sure worked
There was two options: assemble it by yourself, or pre-assembled.
ZX80 launched 29th Jan 1980, but close. I ordered my kit at a computer show in the February. It was an amazing time in the UK computer revolution.
My first UK101, 6502 invaders game shot bullets in to the code if I missed ...
@tortysoft Aah, the UK101... Never had one, but they seemed to be in many of the hobby magazines back in the day.
Ahhh the Archimedes. I loved that computer.
AAAHHHH! THE Acorn A3000 was the bane of my high school life.
Nice to see a telling of this story that just lets Sophie Wilson exist without the side story.
It's rather amazing how unknown her side story is though. She will forever be a giant among giants.
If you ask anyone who was a school kid in Britain in the 80s, they all saw or used a BBC Micro. It had a profound impact. Great documentary
Interesting, I always wondered what the printed ARM script was on STM32F chips on drone flight control boards. Cool video.
We were the proud owners of a Acorn Computer at our Primary/Elementary school in the mid 90s this was one of the first experiences with a computer for us, everyone in our class loved it.
Great video just want to mention that the sound in recent videos is really bass heavy compared to videos a year ago.
Glad I'm not the only one who thought so.
I’m a big fan of education. John does this for free. Keep up the good work.
At this point ARM is just making the definitions for the instructions and Apple is engineering the processor circuitry for iPhones.
Amazing that companies picking arm vs mips made such a difference
I still have an old Acorn Archimedes A440 in my loft, using the first Arm silicone (or as it was originally know Acorn Risk Machine) … and risc OS was stunning for the time
RISC OS is still alive and well. I can and do run it and the old software that I wrote on my Mac M1.
Make sure you remove the CMOS battery, before it leaks
@@AndrewRoberts11 has the 440 got a cmos, I thought it was a battery pack
CMOS (Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) is a chip fabrication technique that results in circuits that hold their state (excluding a bit of seepage) when there is no power. Historically used for small memory chips that hold a computers settings (CMOS / BIOS settings). A battery of SOME type compensates for the seepage, to preserve the CMOS values when there is no mains power. The battery being known as the CMOS battery. CMOS has nothing to do with the batteries composition.
@@AndrewRoberts11 I know, but I think for the cmos backup in the 440 was not an on board cell but a couple of AA batteries off the motherboard
Plot twist: The guy that invented RISC, David Patterson, is the vice chair of the board of directors of the RISC-V Foundation. RISC-V may end up unseating ARM
Your iPhone is actually a British ARM-bassy!
Steve Furbar did the architecture and the electronics. Roger Wilson (his name before his sex change) did the instruction set. This video does Furbar an injustice. do some fact checking you will then understand Furbur's part in all this then release a updated fact correct version of your video.
Steve Furbar, in addition to the physical design for ARM, also did the hardware side of the Acorn Atom, Proton, and BBC Micro. (Roger | Sophie) writing the BASIC, COMAL, ... language interpreters. The likes of Hugo Tyson writing the "advanced disk filing system" used by the BBC, Archimedes, RISC-PC, ... and a test suite, with notorious error messages, for the logical and physical designs of the the pair (Digital's engineers didn't appreciate the automated, profanity laden, critique of their best efforts).
Also the ARM 1 shipped in just a developers evaluation kit / 2nd processor (sidecar) for the BBC micro range. The Archimedes initially shipping with an 8MHz ARM2, in 1987, and 25+ MHz ARM3 silicon, from 1989. The follow on RISC-PC shipped with ARM6, ARM7, and Digital StrongARM CPU's, at up-to 233 MHz, from 1993.
Anyway Johnny Ive was the one who saved Apple, through his novel iMac, iPod, iPhone, ... designs. The ARM based iPod later bringing in more revenue, than the sale of ARM stock.
I still have my BBC Micro model B working in my office :)
One of the most underrated channels on RUclips
As a layman I never really took much notice of ARM when I was either building computers and having a mobile phone and your explanation has now filled me in - thanks. I am also proud that a fellow English person (political correctness here) designed this technology in the first place. I now live in Australia - since 1978 and had no idea of this technology being so important.
Pfff, The Nintendo Game Boy advance was running ARM processors before having ARM processors were cool.
Great video, well researched. I work at arm and it’s nice to see all the new technology we create out in the world.
Kinda crazy to think about the direct lineage between the computers of my youth in the 1980s and early 1990s to the iPhone I’m watching this on now. Both the Acorn BBC Model B and Archimedes saw some success in Australia within the education system. I first used a mouse, GUI and inkjet printer on an A3000. Ironically it was also the first system I used for CAD drafting too (still doing it 25 years later 😂).
There is no sign whatsoever that Apple is saved. It is still living on borrowed time.
Hmm, I designed a PCB for VLSI Technologies around late 80's or very early 90's
Thank you so much for your content. it helps me as student of software engineer. understand how arm invented
We’ll put together.
IMHO someone else would have developed a suitable RISC processor if Acorn hadn’t.
Also there should be an asterisk on call the 8088 at 16-bit processor since it only had an 8-bit data path. The 8086 was a true 16-bit processor.
5:37 "You're looking at a small portable computer" showing something bigger than a desktop computer 🙂
So you’re saying the Apple Newton is one of the most important tech products ever?
I dispute the notion that Apple would not be what it is today absent the ARM.
The need for small microprocessors/controllers would have outed as a different product.
Not mentioned in this video is that ARM processors are in plain sight unrecognized: all sorts of devices use ARM processors, some of them in packages the size of a match head. Thermostats, garage door controllers, routers, ... an endless list.
What's with the audio echo on this video?
Its not fair to say that the iPhone is British. RISC technology was primarily developed in the USA not Britain. ARM just happened to develop RISC for mobile purposes, and many US companies use it for internet servers, etc.
My BBC B was amazing vastly more able than its siblings with a proper depth to its OS. It's fast ram and 2mhz 6502, easily matched early 16bit machines in performance too. And then it had the most powerful and fast Basic ever designed to go with it 😊. As for the ARM I doubt it would have found itself into new neiches without the fading off the Acorn line.
Insightful and informative, thank you!😊
Apple made right bet back then and it pays very well now with excellent results. They both helped each other when it was most needed, this is a partnership done right.
Great content John !!! Very informative indeed !
I don't see the symbiosis. ARM was working with all phone companies before the iphone and cotinued working with all smartphone and tablet companies after.
good quality video, should have more than just 43k views
Love you channel❤ So insightful. I have learnt a great deal from this channel about big tech companies. Great job and keep it up👍