IYONIX PC

11th October 2002

CASTLE TECHNOLOGY'S BEST KEPT SECRET: THE

A NEW 32-BIT RISC OS COMPUTER

One of the best-kept secrets of the RISC OS world was made public today when Castle Technology Ltd at last revealed the first details of a completely new RISC OS computer system. Called the IYONIX PC, this system, which has been under development for some time now, will be launched later this year when full details and specification will be announced.

There are two key features of the IYONIX PC:

It is based on an Intel XScale 32-bit processor.
It will be supplied with a new 32-bit version of RISC OS (RISC OS 5).

This is a significant step forward and moves RISC OS from its previous 26-bit limitations into a new 32-bit world. An entirely new motherboard has been designed from the bottom up, incorporating all the benefits that derive from ARM technology (high performance, low power consumption) to provide a major advance in throughput and performance for RISC OS machines.

The IYONIX PC will support up to 1Gb of DDR (Double Data Rate) RAM, an industry standard PCI graphics card, PCI controller (supporting USB) and a full range of I/O options. The new machine will also provide support for a high-speed version of the existing Acorn EASI podule standard for backwards compatibility using a two-slot backplane. The operating system will be supplied in Flash ROM, eliminating potentially long lead times in production and allowing easy future upgrades.

The new machine will come in a custom adapted solid metal chassis with custom front facia featuring the IYONIX PC name. This will be in a tower configuration.

As well as a new release of RISC OS and associated applications the IYONIX PC will be supplied with a wide range of third-party software applications, all converted to run on 32-bit systems. All major developers in the RISC OS market have been working with Castle and users can expect to see most of their favourite applications converted to run in 32-bit mode by the time the new system is launched. To facilitate this, Castle has released an updated version of the Acorn Development Suite for 32-bit software development which will provide software developers with all that is needed to produce or convert software to run in 32-bit mode.

Technical note: previous ARM600, ARM700 and StrongARM processors supported both 26-bit and 32-bit operation, but RISC OS was maintained solely as a 26-bit operating system for backward compatibility.

Further details and a chance to win an IYONIX PC can be found on the IYONIX PC Web site www.iyonix.com.

A full specification, including options and pricing, will be made available at the time of launch. Until then no further information will be released.

Mike Williams for Castle Technology, 11th October 2002