In 1988, Scottish hi-fi maker Linn Products developed the Rekursiv, a custom silicon computer that implemented hardware-checked memory safety, garbage collection, and a unified persistent object store, embodying advanced concepts that only became mainstream decades later. Although it was commercially unsuccessful due to the rapid advancement of commodity RISC processors and economic factors, its architectural ideas have since re-emerged in modern systems like Arm’s CHERI and workload-specific processors. The Rekursiv’s story illustrates how innovation can be ahead of its time, with its principles now shaping current and future computing architectures.
https://negroniventurestudios.com/2026/07/18/the-computer-at-the-bottom-of-a-canal/