That computer was simply the most advanced,įrom a hardware and software point of view, and we had to work on it. So once Acorn announced their first computer, it was off Atari, and back to developing Acorn software. It easily beat the rather poor 8086 16-bit processor that powered the IBM PC at the time. What they created was not only the first affordable 32-bit processor,īut the fastest chip around, by a large margin. Acorn wanted to find a 32-bit replacement and, for one reason and another, decided to develop their own brand new 32-bitĪrchitecture, that had the simplicity of the 6502, but was true 32-bit. The BBC Micro used the 6502 8-bit processor which was very simple, but veryįast (for the time). We knew about Acorn's RISC developments from the very beginning.