HN user
Writing a newsletter about computer history at thechipletter.substack.com
The paper came out of work on ENIAC and was adapted to follow the approach in the paper but Baby was built from outset to use that approach and its design much more closely matches the architecture that has been used by almost all digital computers since. I don’t dispute that ENIAC is important but it’s role is more nuanced than this article implies.
ENIAC was very important but this article overstates its significance and ignores other (non US) machines to the point of historical inaccuracy. No mention of Z3 or Manchester Baby for example, the latter based on the von Neumann paper for example, was arguably a more accurate pointer towards how computer architecture would develop.
You don’t think it’s a strength that they have the courage to seek views from as wide a range of perspectives as possible, including from outside the UK?
The point about the difficulties with Arm may be fair comment but the positioning and outlook of this post is decidedly weird. It seems to pretend that competitive desktop Arm processors already exist and ignores the existence of Arm ACPI.
On the conclusion - x86 didn't eventually win in smartphones.
And of course having a choice of processor designs from precisely two firms is absolutely something that we should continue to be happy with (and the post ignores RISC-V).
The brand is built on Dyson being a super genius inventor. He might be ingenious but he's applied to devices where it's not really needed and with unpalatable trade-offs.
In the UK at least his actions (offshoring, Brexit and tax) have probably significantly devalued the brand with a key part of his core demographic.
Ha! Very good and unlike say Windows it doesn't suck.
We have a pre-schooler and am happy to confirm that our Henry is a favourite member of the family.
Just as important he's sufficiently strong to withstand our boy's curiosity :)
Fascinating, but I'm not sure how these are consistent?
- Based on classic Z80 architecture by Zilog - Inspired by modern RISC designs (ARM, RISC-V, MIPS)
And to prove it is possible to have a profitable vacuum cleaner manufacturing business that makes its machines in the UK - long live Henry!
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jul/24/how-hen...
And unlike Dyson they are almost indestructible!
Web version with links, etc:
Pamantasan Cheese
What cheese? A misspelling?
Then in maybe one of the best rug pulls of all time, in July they quietly changed their valuation to $500 million. A 75% cut in four months. I’ve never seen anything like that since the 2008 financial crisis.
Not sure where the author is getting their information from but there is seemingly little correlation between the investment rounds quoted in this post and other online sources. No mention for example of the Series E that valued Groq at $6.9bn.
Discussed a few days ago:
First Microprocessor – 50th Anniversary 2020
Cook’s greatest achievement - Apple’s supply chain - has, as set out in the ‘Apple in China’ book [1], turned into Apple’s biggest risk and weakness. The next CEO won’t be worrying about Siri or Vision Pro; they’ll be trying to deal with Apple’s reliance on China.
[1] https://open.substack.com/pub/thechipletter/p/apple-in-china
Genuine question: what compromises are you referring to here?
I agree with Ken Shirriff [1]
In my view, the key features of a microprocessor are that it provides a CPU on a single chip (including ALU, control functions, and registers such as a program counter) and that it is programmable.
Which means that, pioneering as it was, this wasn’t a microprocessor.
Ken’s post is terrific btw for an overview of the candidates for the title of first microprocessor.
[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-surprising-story-of-the-first-...
We don't know how long Arm was cooking up ARMv8 in secret before they announced it in 2011. Was it five years? Was it 10? More?
Arm says "We started work on ARMv8-A in 2007"
Source: Arm plc Strategic Report 2014
Thank you. I’ve added a brief summary of this in the top comment.
For balance here is SemiAnalysis - who really know what they are talking about - on Substrate
https://open.substack.com/pub/semianalysis/p/how-to-kill-2-m...
I don’t have the expertise to say whether I agree with the conclusions of the post but the experience and track records of the founders are surely relevant? Happy to be shown evidence that these sections of the post are wrong.
The same guys who couldn’t develop a sleep tracker?
https://open.substack.com/pub/foxchapelresearch/p/i-think-su...
Edit please note the comments in the linked post by SemiAnalysis below who have lots of reports that the tool is legit but who are skeptical. They have clearly progressed somewhat since the tracker project!
It’s a false rumour. Arm has decades of ISA design experience and their chief architect has talked about designing Aarch64.
Sure they Apple and Arm worked together but it wasn’t developed by Apple and given to Arm.
Very unlikely. Moving to Arm allowed Apple to have a single architecture across all their hardware and leverage iPhone designs as the starting point for Mac SoCs.
The chip is expected to power future Microsoft Surface products scheduled for release in 2026.
They would have to persuade MS to create Windows for RISC-V in this case.
You might like the AMP hour podcast that had the team behind the RP2350 on. Lots of interesting stuff on what was involved in making it. One of my favourite podcast episodes this year.
https://theamphour.com/687-the-rp2350-with-the-raspberry-pi-...
Not to disagree with your critique but just to note that they are a microcontroller vendor with the RP2040 and RP2350.
I do wonder if there is a long term wish to break their dependency on Broadcom but I suspect creating an SoC for the main Pi series is probably in the 'too difficult' category.
Sorry, Apple didn’t help to develop ARM originally. They were an early investor and customer of Advanced RISC Machines when it was spun out of Acorn.
It's clear that Arm worked with Apple on AArch64 but saying it was basically designed 'by Apple' rather than 'with Apple' is demonstrably unfair to the Arm team who have decades of experience in ISA design.
If Apple didn't need Arm then they would have probably found a way of going it alone.
Probably closer to RISC-1 which shouldn't be surprising given Patterson's role in both - as Patterson himself sets out:
https://aspire.eecs.berkeley.edu/2017/06/how-close-is-risc-v...
https://thechipletter.substack.com/p/risc-on-a-chip-david-pa...