Digital developed the StrongARM - Intel bought it from them a year or two ago, along with most of their IC development and FAB operations.

It's nice to see the ARM processor having achieved near global domination of its core markets (embedded and low power applications). Hugo and myself have been advocates of the processor for many years (since 1987 and 1989 respectively) and I always thought it deserved to grow far beyond the scope of the small British computer manufacturer (Acorn) that developed it. Acorn are history now, but offloading ARM in partnership with Apple and VLSI was the best decision they ever made.

We have a close relationship with ARM, not least because Hugo has worked closely with many of the people there throughout the last decade. As it happens, the maths guru behind ARM's audio CODEC libraries (with which we are soon to replace X-Audio in the car player) had his first commercial program - a game involving a ball, a track, lots of physics and some strategy - published by Hugo in, erm, 1992-ish. I was project manager, but that isn't much to boast about as it didn't sell very well, despite being utterly froody! Another programmer who contributed to that project is one Toby Duckworth.

Small world innit?

Rob