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ARMs, ARMs, everywhere, nor any bit to run (with apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

In the Science Museum there is a display about the history of microprocessors (next to the gold BBC Micro!) which includes a video about the development af the ARM featuring Sophie Wilson and Herman Hauser. It finishes with Sophie saying "ARMs are everywhere". With ARM and their partners selling over a billion processors per month, this is without doubt, and the proliferaton of ARM boards has greatly benefitted RISC OS over the past 10 years or so.

However with the move to 64bit ARMv8 processors the future might not be so rosy. As raised in this thread on the ROOL forum, the next generation of ARMs might not be able to run RISC OS. We could be left with high end 64bit cpus and low end Cortex-M, neither of which is compatible with RISC OS.

During the meeting we will be looking at the history of changes to the ARM architecture, the effects they have had on compatibility with RISC OS and its applications, and what the options are for the future.

Before the main topic of the meeting Bernard Boase gave us a brief intro to Ident Computer's CE, their new modular 3D printed cases for the Raspberry Pi.