[danellis]

This part, though:

"ARM stands for Advanced RISC Machines, the name given to the company when it was spun out of Acorn Computers back in the day. It was abbreviated to ARM when the firm went public in 1998."

It was always abbreviated to ARM, ever since the 1980s. The whole reason for "Advanced RISC Machines" was to match the acronym they already had.

[pm215]

Right, but I think that 1998 is when it (officially/branding-wise) went from being an acronym with an expansion to being just three letters with no official 'long form'. (Compare the way IBM these days is just IBM, not International Business Machines.)

[tgflynn]

> Compare the way IBM these days is just IBM, not International Business Machines.

This is the second time I've seen someone make this claim online and I wonder where it comes from. IBM's name is still officially "International Business Machines Corporation (IBM Corp.)" according to this legal statement:

https://www.ibm.com/privacy/us/en/.

As for how it's referred to in practice, I've always heard it called IBM for as long as I can remember (at least back to the 70's) and I think that's been the case for much longer.

[pm215]

Oops, my mistake. I did try to check my belief on the IBM website by looking for an 'about the company' section but it was so reader-hostile I gave up and assumed that IBM was the name they were going by these days. Arm is definitely Arm, though, not anything-risc-machines.

[jng]

Because the original was actually Acorn RISC Machines. They might have as well gone on to become "Acorn", well in line with Apple, which they power nowadays to a large degree, and which they might power to a much larger degree in the near future.

[danellis]

> They might have as well gone on to become "Acorn"

They were Acorn at that point. That's why the CPU was called Acorn RISC Machine (singular). There was never any company called "Acorn RISC Machines".

[jng]

Good to know, thanks!