There's an interesting article up here with Steve Furber, one of the designers of the BBC Micro and ARM processor. It's been linked to from Slashdot, which is where we came across it.
 
There's some background in there on the development of the original ARM designs, as well as the StrongARM and the current SpiNNaker project, an attempt to come up with a more biologically based style of computation.
 
All fascinating stuff, and especially so at the moment with the explosion of ARM-based computers out there.
 

Ever since Jeffrey Lee began work on porting RISC OS to developer boards such as the BeagleBoard and IGEPv2 there's been interest in putting a case around them to make them into proper computers. Both ports are still firmly in progress, so a finished-off A9-style computer isn't likely to appear for some time. That hasn't stopped some hobbyists having a go at making their own. This one looks particularly impressive:
 

 
There are more pics and description here on the ROOL forums. The nutBOX comes hot on the heels of Dave Thomas's lego housing for his IGEPv2 here, first reported on riscos.info.
 
There's still some way to go before the RISC OS OMAP port is stable enough to drive a general purpose computer suitable for everyday use, but in the meantime, plenty of people are having fun with what already exists...
 

Last week saw this year's annual Consumer Electronics Show go down in Las Vegas. The world's largest consumer technology tradeshow, it's traditionally a source for many product announcements from the major manufacturers. This year there was a lot of focus on 3D TVs, e-readers, and, most importantly for us, next-generation ARM-powered goodies.

 
 

For the past several years Drobe have run their yearly Drobe awards, in which members of the public nominate and vote for the RISC OS products and people who they believe have best served the platform over the course of the year. After a quick check with Drobe foreman Chris Williams to make sure he wasn't planning on running the awards this year, the staff at TIB decided it would be a good idea if we picked up the metaphorical torch and ran the awards ourselves. So, ladies and gentlemen, prepare for the first annual Icon Bar awards!
 
This year there will be four categories open for nomination. Once a suitable number of nominations have been collected, the voting booths will be opened. Then at the end of the year the votes will be tallied and the winner and runner-up for each category will be revealed. The categories for this year are:

• Best commercial product
• Best non-commercial product
• Best new development
• Best RISC OS show/event

Of course, if you want to nominate something that doesn't fit into any of the above categories, feel free to send it in and we'll see what we can do!
 
Update: Thanks for all your suggestions. Voting is now open until the end of the year.
 

As you may or may not already know, over the past few weeks I've been working on improving the performance of RISC OS 5's USB mass storage drivers. Although RISC OS Open have yet to make an official announcement about the availability of the drivers, they are in fact available for download now from the ROOL website.
 
Read on for some brief benchmarks, and instructions on how to install the drivers on your Iyonix.
 
 

For several years now, the need to get RISC OS running on faster hardware has been pressing. It may not be the platform's worst headache (lack of developers is surely the biggest problem), but the Iyonix and A9 hardware are now well past their prime. Even on release they weren't blisteringly quick, and cheap PCs have now left them far, far behind. Things that are taken for granted on a Windows or Mac OS machine, such as watching video, are simply impossible on current generation RISC OS hardware.
 
 

Last week saw this year's annual Computex Taipei computer trade show go down in Taiwan. The second largest computer trade show in the world, it's traditionally a source for many product announcements from the major manufacturers. Most of the time these announcements are of x86-based products, but this year it was ARM's turn to take center stage, delivering on last year's announcement that ARM were to make a big push into the netbook market. Although none of the products listed here are in stores at the moment, all announcements point towards a good number of them being made available before the year is out.

 
 

As most of you probably know by now, a few months ago I started work on porting RISC OS Open's RISC OS kernel to TI's OMAP3 platform - a group of SoC's (Systems on a Chip) which use ARM Cortex-A8 cores. To date, OMAP3 SoC's have been confirmed as being used in various products, including the Pandora handheld gaming console, the Touch Book convertible netbook/tablet, and the BeagleBoard development board. For years RISC OS users have been asking for a new portable RISC OS machine, and soon they may find that they have several available.