"Castle Technology Ltd and Tematic Limited today confirmed that Castle and Tematic merged in the fourth quarter of 2003. The combined business will trade under the Castle Technology Ltd name with a new "Tematic Division", focused on offering full design and engineering resources to customers wishing to licence RISC OS for use in their new products.

The Tematic Division will continue to be based in Cambridge and will develop and support an embedded version of RISC OS which has been designed for use in the new generation of smart multimedia products for the high volume consumer electronics market."

This move is the next logical step for the two companies. Tematic developed the Iyonix hardware with Castle, although at the time of the launch you'd only have known this by following the underground rumour mill. Castle and Tematic announced a joint venture with Tematic when they bought RISC OS from Pace. The Tematic logo has been prominent on the Castle web site since its relaunch, as well as the documentation you'd get when buying an Iyonix.

With the operating system and hardware development aspects now tied together, and a mix of once-Pace, once-Acorn engineers, Castle really do seem like they're becoming the New (or, if you prefer, the Old) Acorn.

Update: It's been noticed on our forums that Castle have modified the minature graphics on their logo to better reflect the company and its products.

Press release