A history of ARM, part 1: Building the first chip - Ars Technica

It was 1983, and Acorn Computers was on top of the world.

Acorn needed a way to compete, but it didn’t have much money for research and development.

Wilson and co-designer Steve Furber considered various 16-bit options, such as Intel’s 80286, National Semiconductor’s 32016, and Motorola’s 68000.

So the first thing they didn’t do was they didn’t make good use of the memory system?

The second thing they didn’t do was that they weren’t fast; they weren’t easy to use.

Was it even thinkable for tiny Acorn to make its own CPU from scratch.

To find out, Wilson and Furber took a trip to National Semiconductor’s factory in Israel.

Wilson and Furber found little more than a “bungalow in a suburb” with a few engineers and some students making diagrams using old Apple II computers and bits of sticky tape.

Suddenly, making their own CPU seemed like it might be possible.

Wilson and Furber’s small team had built custom chips before, like the graphics and input/output chips for the BBC Micro.