Castle Technology Limited, named after

Framlingham Castle Framlingham Castle is a castle in the market town of Framlingham, Suffolk, England. An early motte and bailey or ringwork Norman castle was built on the Framlingham site by 1148, but this was destroyed (Slighting, slighted) by Henry II of Engl ...

, was a British

computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...

company based in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. It began as a producer of

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between ...

computers and manufactured the

Acorn The acorn is the nut (fruit), nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera ''Quercus'', ''Notholithocarpus'' and ''Lithocarpus'', in the family Fagaceae). It usually contains a seedling surrounded by two cotyledons (seedling leaves), en ...

-branded range of desktop computers that run

RISC OS RISC OS () is an operating system designed to run on ARM architecture, ARM computers. Originally designed in 1987 by Acorn Computers of England, it was made for use in its new line of ARM-based Acorn Archimedes, Archimedes personal computers an ...

. Following the break-up of

in 1998, Castle Technology bought the rights to continue production of the RISC PC and A7000+ computers under the Acorn

brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and ...

. Castle Technology later released the Iyonix PC in November 2002, the first

desktop computer A desktop computer, often abbreviated as desktop, is a personal computer designed for regular use at a stationary location on or near a desk (as opposed to a portable computer) due to its size and power requirements. The most common configuratio ...

to use the

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

XScale XScale is a microarchitecture for central processing units initially designed by Intel implementing the ARM architecture (version 5) instruction set. XScale comprises several distinct families: IXP, IXC, IOP, PXA and CE (see more below), with some ...

microarchitecture In electronics, computer science and computer engineering, microarchitecture, also called computer organization and sometimes abbreviated as μarch or uarch, is the way a given instruction set architecture (ISA) is implemented in a particular ...

and then bought the rights to the

Technology from Pace in July 2003.

History

After Acorn withdrew from the

industry in 1998, Castle Technology acquired the rights to produce the A7000, A7000+ and RISC PC using the ''Acorn'' brand. In 2001, development started on the Iyonix PC (codenamed ''Tungsten'') as a set-top unit (STU) in secret by engineers at Pace's Shipley campus along with a

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...

version of RISC OS 4 (known as RISC OS 5). When management discovered the project the campus was closed. Castle Technology acquired the proposed designs and the original engineers from Pace to further develop the Tungsten into a

. Robert Sprowson, the original hardware designer, declined to join Castle Technology and so Peter Wild was recruited. The Iyonix PC was released six months later. Although it was well received, it was not designed for long-term production and therefore used some components that were near obsolete when it was released. A problem for the Iyonix PC was that it used

lead Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...

ed components which were outlawed with the adoption of Directive 2002–95/EC in February 2003 by the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

. However, by this time Castle Technology was financially troubled and could not afford to re-engineer the Iyonix PC without the leaded components. The remaining Iyonix stock were passed to Iyonix Limited which stopped distribution on 30 September 2008. In 2004, Castle Technology acquired Tematic to further development of

embedded system An embedded system is a specialized computer system—a combination of a computer processor, computer memory, and input/output peripheral devices—that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electronic system. It is e ...

s. In December 2005, Castle Technology moved its main office to the former premises of its

software development Software development is the process of designing and Implementation, implementing a software solution to Computer user satisfaction, satisfy a User (computing), user. The process is more encompassing than Computer programming, programming, wri ...

division, following the migration of Tematic to a neighbouring premises in Signet Court,

. In 2018 RISC OS Developments acquired Castle Technology Ltd including the Intellectual Property.

References

External links

* {{RISC OS RISC OS Defunct computer hardware companies Companies based in Cambridge