In 1987, Acorn launched the Archimedes home computer. At the time, it was the fastest desktop computer in the world, and at the time, I was fortunate enough to have one to experiment with. The Archimedes was great, but it never really took off commercially. However, it was built around the ARM processor, which Acorn had designed itself when it could not find any existing processors suitable for its 32-bit ambitions. The ARM processor was a masterpiece of simple and intuitive design, and its still around today, with most of the instruction set pretty much unchanged. In fact, you've probably got one in your pocket right now. Its design makes it process very efficiently on low energy intake, and hence it is estimated that about 98% of all mobile phones contain an ARM chip. Over 10 billion ARM chips have been shipped, and they outnumber Intel's long running x86 series of chips by a factor of about 5 to 10. I had learned programming on the BBC Model B , and when we got the A
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