AT&T’s CRISP Hobbits – an unexpected journey for AT&T’s own low power processor
Telecoms giant AT&T once had giant computing ambitions. Its Bell Labs research arm invented the transistor and developed the C programming language and the Unix operating system. As the owner of Western Electric, AT&T manufactured electronic equipment in volume. After it was forced to spin off the ‘Baby Bells’ in 1984, AT&T acquired computer and ATM manufacturer NCR.
So we shouldn’t be surprised then that AT&T designed and manufactured its own microprocessors.
Babbage on The Chip Letter looks at the history of one of those designs, the Hobbit.
We’ve met the Hobbit twice already. First, as the processor that Apple initially used when they started to design the Newton handheld, only to abandon it in favour of the ARM architecture. Then, we encountered it as the processor used in the early designs of Jean-Louis Gassée’s BeBox.
The Hobbit is now a footnote in history, but it’s a really interesting microprocessor. It’s quite different to the ARM that replaced it and to most modern designs. So let’s have a look at the Hobbit and its story.
The story starts with the development of the C programming language at AT&T’s Bell Labs.
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