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Fun fact buried in the article, Acorn renamed itself to Element14 and are today of the biggest Raspberry Pi distributors (edit: incorrect, see below):

> Acorn sold its stock and used the money to refinance and restructure the company. In 1999, the company renamed itself “Element 14” and changed its focus to developing telecommunications products.

https://community.element14.com/products/raspberry-pi

So they're still selling ARMs!

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Different company, the ex-Acorn one was bought by Broadcom in 2000 and disappeared, Farnell renamed itself Farnell Element14 circa 2010 (although it looks like they're just back to being Farnell again now).

Ah, thanks for clarifying! I wasn't expecting such a name to have been used by two different companies.

It's a reference to silicon, the element with atomic number 14. Makes sense that it would be used by more than one company.

Yes, the Element14 that is selling the Raspberry Pi is a subsidiary of Premier Farnell, which is now owned by Avnet.

Farnell is the giant electronics behemoth that sells just about every electronic component on the planet. Farnell will also sell you just about every ARM based CPU that is freely available on the market, whether you want 1, or 1 million of them.

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