If you were writing reality as a screenplay, and, for some baffling reason, you had to specify what the most common central processing unit used in most phones, game consoles, ATMs, and other innumerable devices was, you’d likely pick one from one of the major manufacturers, like Intel. That state of affairs would make sense and fit in with the world as people understand it; the market dominance of some industry stalwart would raise no eyebrows or any other bits of hair on anyone.
But what if, instead, you decided to make those CPUs all hail from a barely-known company from a country usually not the first to come to mind as a global leader in high-tech innovations (well, not since, say, the 1800s)? And what if that CPU owed its existence, at least indirectly, to an educational TV show? Chances are the producers would tell you to dial this script back a bit; come on, take this seriously, already.
And yet, somehow, that’s how reality actually is.
ARM is one of Britain’s greatest contributions to the technology sector, and those men and women at Acorn, the BBC, and everyone else involved in the BBC Computer Literacy Project were far, far ahead of their time, and saw before a lot of other governments just how important computing was going to be.
I take exception with Arstechnica describing Acorn as “obscure”. Most of the rest of the article is fine. They did miss one key item which made ARM much faster than x86. The ARM design did some magic with transfering data internally which is also why ARM had a none standard bit length. I don’t agree with Artstechnica’s claim the story was improbable. Anyone of a certain age will know this kind of evolution is historically part of the fabric of British culture. There is a saying in military affairs especially of “The luck of the British” and it has been observed it happens too many times for it to be an accident. Then there is “Lions led by Donkey’s”.
I often find well trained and capable people when allowed to get on with achieving a goal tend to do well. Over the past year I have read some truly excellent media. When editors and politics get in the way things tend to suffer. I’m left scrabbling for things like media discussion because the UK no longer has industry left. Invisible manufacturers who produce widgets for export and who cannot do fast turnaroud short supply runs don’t count.
Around the time ARM was getting off the ground the ex Chairman of ICI Sir John Harvey-Jones presented his groudbreaking “Troubleshooter” series. Since then years of anti-industrial policies and a complete lack of strategic economic policy and years of privatisation programmes and cash-outs to the first foreign hedge fund or competitor who made an offer has done its damage. ARM was “the crown jewels”. I am still reeling from ARM being sold off as it was not to mention Brexit and the deeply evil anti-European austerity regime.
As a sidebar the much more recent and largely appalling Cameron government appointed a minister who knew what they were doing. Francis Maude pushed a number of initiatives including mandating anyone engaging with government must support open document formats, and hiring a department of technically excellent staff would were allowing to get on with things without meddling. The open government initiative which put government services online was delivered on time and on budget and actually worked. after cameron got the boot the Tories ditched this and the inevitable blout and budget busting happened and nothing worked. Blink and you would miss it but I read last week the Johnson government is only just beginning to talk about restarting the Maude initiative. Too little too late and I daresay any trust among professionals was lost a long time ago. All the current vacancies remain unfilled.
That’s a rather large detour you’ve made here. 🙂 But you are right, ARM wasn’t a random garage gig and Britain was a good environment for such enterprises at the time. The article was written for a US audience, which may not be familiar with it.
Still, I’d say ARM has sneaked under the radar thanks to its relatively open business model and usable but unthreatening performance. It has found its niche in mobile devices, too power limited to use high performance CPUs and too demanding and generic to need an MCU. It has grown with it to the world’s most popular CPU architecture. I’m curious to see how things develop in the future – ARM is in a good position now but it hasn’t grown the kind of a binary software distribution market x86/x64 has got in form of Windows. This makes it relatively easy to replace, and with current mobile devices CPU architecture takes a rear seat to its microarchitecture.
CPU architecture is micro architecture. Perhaps you meant ISA?
Fair comment. The US gains a lot of unfair advantage with the Wintel monopoly which not only destroyed but continues to suppress competition. I’m also old enough to remember when tech courses taught skills not a product.
“I take exception with Arstechnica describing Acorn as “obscure”.
My thoughts exactly. Acorn were second only to Sinclair at the time for home computers in the UK (although undoubtedly better computers, but at nearly twice the price).
It’s an American website, they have little context/information about the state of computing overseas.
It would be the same if someone asked you what was the most popular computer/brand in the 80s in Japan (I have no clue).
The meta discussion is important from a soft power and marketing point of view. It’s also one reason to suggest Google’s index is rigged in favour of US companies. People really underestimate how a single market the size of the US stamps over everything else. Big companies in the US even stamp over each other.
It’s the job of media to do their research. Up until the 1990s at least UK media including broadcasting and print was fairly outward looking. Things have changed a lot since then with capture by the right wing and much more journalism not being done by oevrseas staff but outsourced foriegn staff. The media view has narrowed quite a lot and the view abroad isn’t brought home as much as it used to be. Continental Europe is almost entirely a black hole.
Watch this also :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXBxV6-zamM
Going out on a limb here, but arguably the impact of the British Micro scene on spawning future game coders also had a global influence. Micro computer gaming was far more prevalent than consoles in the UK in the 80’s so the market for bedroom coders was much more lucrative.
I think the lesson in the headline is that you are obscure until Apple headlines you. ARM has been in a zillion devices, including the first iPhone, and no “Obscure British etc..” articles to be seen. This is until Apple makes the chip switch a big deal …. again.
“Quaint” would have been a good adjective as well, maybe better. than “Obscure”. Watch Micro Men and you will get the idea.
quaint
/kweɪnt/
adjective
attractively unusual or old-fashioned.
“quaint country cottages”
Yes this is absolutely correct. Per capita the UK was the most computer literate in the world. The combination of policies and business interest and a rich ecosystem of talent created a lot of opportunity people went on to realise.
The way the US economy is managed is it tends to put a lot of effort into a growth area and has a massive and rapid culling of companies on the way to a small number winning the top spots. The US economy then pivots and scales behind this so you get more money and more marketing attention thrown at them. This is then leveraged in foreign markets. As you note then if allowed the US or an individual US company takes on a “gatekeeper” role. US competition law is different and compeition is interpreted in the US than in European countries. The EU has more recently been pushing actions on this basis hence a lot of litigation against big tech. At the same time most of Europe is a fragmented market with language barriers. It’s nowhere near as bad as it was pre-WWII. This is partly because of the post war drive to unify Europe and also, ironically, some pressure from the US with the Marshall Plan used as a carrot to open up European markets which up until that point had been resistant to outside trade.
Money often follows attention. We now know Alan Greenspan pretty much lied through hsi teeth when talking up the American economy prior to the dot com boom. Nearly half of the investment money flowing into SIlicon Valley was European in origin. European basically bankrolled the US during this time. Throw in search engine and social media monopolies and you have a massive skew against European trade and cultural development? Then the financial crash where the US unlawfully outsourced its bad debt onto the rest of the world including Europe?
I don’t think anti-Americanism is healthy but I certainly think Europe could do with turning down the dial on America and realising more of its own potential. One start would be not allowing the likes of Arstechnica et al to act as gatekeepers.