Interview with Ms Wilson: http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102746190 - interesting throughout.
Sophie Wilson, Acorn and the development of ARM
51–60 of 76 posts
Re: Sophie Wilson, Acorn and the development of ARM
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way I hear it[1], she did the instruction packing on a pub napkin, while IBM were devoting quite a bit of computing horsepower to do the same thing. [1] Vague recollections of an article in Acorn User. I'd really have to dig out those old magazines to be sure.
That wouldn't surprise me at all. And the really staggering thing is how little the ARM's design and instruction set has changed since then. The fact that you can use Peter Cockerell's 1980-something tutorial on ARM ASM even today shows how well it was designed. I put it up there with such quality-without-a-name pieces of engineering like the SR-71, the HP-12C and the Leica M3.
The SR-71 was so far ahead of its time, it's a little ridiculous. Look down/shoot down capability in the mid 1960s. Synthetic aperture radar mapping. An IMU/astronavigation system almost as capable as the early GPS units of a few decades later. An airframe that actually becomes stronger the more you fly it as designed. Thermal management system techniques that weren't used elsewhere for decades. I can keep going. But basically, for almost every single system in the aircraft, the next comparable system you can find was developed at least 1 to 2 decades later.
Re: Sophie Wilson, Acorn and the development of ARM
#53Her WP page got me to this nice page: Which Machines Do Computer Architects Admire?
http://people.cs.clemson.edu/~mark/admired_designs.html#wils...
Re: Sophie Wilson, Acorn and the development of ARM
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I interviewed Steve Furber for a magazine feature about the ARM many years ago and he confirmed to me that Sophie pretty much designed and implemented the whole ARM instruction set in her head. It worked first time when switched on.
...designed and implemented the whole ARM instruction set in her head... Wow! With today's CPUs you probably wouldn't stand a chance, no matter how good you are.
On the contrary. Just because x86 is a baroque monstrosity doesn't mean simple, powerful ISAs are unpossible.
Re: Sophie Wilson, Acorn and the development of ARM
#55It's historically relevant that at the time of those remarkable accomplishments Sophie was named "Roger". And this is an article about history, isn't it?
What relevance do you see? Certainly seems to have no relationship to the topic at first glance, but your perspective may enlighten.
Re: Sophie Wilson, Acorn and the development of ARM
#56I think there's a lot of fondness for Acorn, at least here in the UK but I'd like to offer a slightly more accurate history. I was the owner of many Acorn machines including BBC B, Master, A410, RiscPC 600. The hardware, clearly designed or at least originated by Sophie Wilson was remarkable. It was robust, well designed and incredibly expandable. To this day there is not a single computer that actually made sense mo…
Windows and Mac OS were both cooperatively multitasking until 1995 and 2001, although they did have more memory protection than RISC OS. As to the worldview, everyone had their own worldview before the internet, / vs \ vs : vs . Mac OS Classic had filetypes, same as RISC OS. Bit odd that the web uses them really, considering it has mimetypes. The RISC OS GUI is still miles ahead of everyone else. Its application pack…
Not until 2k/xp finally retired the 9x/DOS line did Windows "work".
9x was just so finicky that you didn't really want to push the multitasking.
Re: Sophie Wilson, Acorn and the development of ARM
#57It's historically relevant that at the time of those remarkable accomplishments Sophie was named "Roger". And this is an article about history, isn't it?
It might be an interesting adjunct to how a part of the tech community treated one of their own with acceptance but beyond that, no, not terribly relevant. If anything, that's entirely incidental to the story, other than the fact that the Acorn community was very accepting of her transition.
Consider the following scenario. Let's say Sophie was born female and never needed to transition. Now, let's say that she got married after Acorn folded in the late '90s, and took her husband's name. In that case, we'd refer to her by the name she uses now, not the name she used then. The same goes in this case.
Re: Sophie Wilson, Acorn and the development of ARM
#58Even if you have an Intel-based phone in your pocket, it probably has ARM cores in it too. They get everywhere :-)
Are you sure about that? (I hear they use low-end x86 cores and ARC cores but I haven't heard about ARM. ARC in general is very hackable while ARM is not hackable at all, so those rumors made sense to me.)
Well there are many places where you might find an ARM e.g. baseband chip, power management chip, GPS chip and so on.
Re: Sophie Wilson, Acorn and the development of ARM
#59It's historically relevant that at the time of those remarkable accomplishments Sophie was named "Roger". And this is an article about history, isn't it?
What relevance do you see? Certainly seems to have no relationship to the topic at first glance, but your perspective may enlighten.
Interesting, certainly, to find out that a technically accomplished womaan is actually transgendered. It is also interesting (and perhaps relevant) to know that she accomplished these things in an environment where she was percieved as male, and therefore had none of the friction and other problems or issues that might be encountered by women in such a male dominated field. It's great that she was able to keep her role, and was accepted as a woman afterwards, as well.
It also seems to be more likely (than in other fields) to find trans woman in IT, but I worry that this is simply confirmation bias at work? I wonder if there is any research on the relative statistics of trans folk in the IT industry?
EDIT: Thinking about it, perhaps it is just that, as with the GP comment, people are more likely to bring the fact up in a field like IT, where 'facts' are held as more important, and in other areas it would simply be ignored or not mentioned?
Re: Sophie Wilson, Acorn and the development of ARM
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way I hear it[1], she did the instruction packing on a pub napkin, while IBM were devoting quite a bit of computing horsepower to do the same thing. [1] Vague recollections of an article in Acorn User. I'd really have to dig out those old magazines to be sure.
That wouldn't surprise me at all. And the really staggering thing is how little the ARM's design and instruction set has changed since then. The fact that you can use Peter Cockerell's 1980-something tutorial on ARM ASM even today shows how well it was designed. I put it up there with such quality-without-a-name pieces of engineering like the SR-71, the HP-12C and the Leica M3.
Oh, without a doubt. ARM assembly is a joy to code, much more so than any other. It just feels... right. There's no fluff and cruft and, at the same time, it didn't feel like there was anything really missing. RISC processors have a reputation for poor code density, but the ARM, even when it came out originally, was the exception to that rule: it was pretty easy to get code density for the ARM comparable to that of the 680x0 and x86.
It's a wonderful achievement.