[rescue] The ARM [was: Another fine business decision for us axp-lovers]

[Paul Sladen]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2001, Reagen B. Ward wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 21, 2001 at 09:08:35AM -0500, Scott Newell wrote:
> 
> > Maybe you should be thinking ARM--the next generation Dragonball, the
> > MC9328MX1, uses the ARM9 core.  It appears to have an MMU, along with all
> > sorts of other neat goodies.
> 
> So, when I hear that palm is moving to ARM, they're actually moving to a
> new Motorola chip with an ARM core?  That's really funny to me for some
> reason.

I find it funny too;  but for a different reason!  Just for non-Brits; the
ARM originally stood for `Acorn Risc Machine', and first showed its head
15years ago in an exceedingly cool range of British educational machines:  
the Acorn.

The original ARM `RISC-OS' featured angle-independant anti-aliased text;
a `!Draw' program in ROM that only QuarkXPress comes close to;  add to that,
benchmark Music Score-setting software `Sebilius' that will run in 1MB RAM
whilist playing the score back using a 32-channel software synth.

And now:  These chips, `seemingly' run 90% of Mobile Phones, PDAs and other
small embedded jobs throughout the world.  Hey, the Brits are conqueroring
the world again!  :-)

Paul


PS.  Somebody also found they could run one of the older ARM chips on Static
Electricty.... the damn thing wouldn't reset if you removed the power, and
instead just kept going!  It's a pity both DEC (of Alpha), and Intel (of
x86 crude) have had turns at bastardising the core.