I can remember attending a meeting of the Cambridge University Computer Society (in 1985?) when a presenter from Acorn (Steve Furber?) talked about the new CPU they had developed.

I think the right adjective for the reaction of those present was 'incredulous'. A small team with no previous experience had created a powerful 32-bit design from scratch when 8-bit architectures were still commonly used.

Had anyone told us that 40 years later we'd all be carrying around the 'descendants' of that first Acorn RISC Machine in our pockets then we'd have been utterly astonished.

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crinkly 3 days ago | parent [-]

Notably it was the first CPU they designed and the first silicon worked out of the box.

	▲	mikehall314 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		On the one occasion I met Steve Furber, he told me about how when they connected up the very first chip, he was surprised that the it started running before he had even connected the power. Turns out the design was such a low power design that just the voltage from the data lines was enough to run the chip.