A long time ago in a galaxy far away...
There was an engineer that used to design sonar equipment (IIRC). He also played the guitar. The equipment he used for his musical endeavours were quite cumbersome in many ways. With his experience in mathematics and processing he figured there was more to be had from the digital domain than was available at the time. So he sat down on the porch, petted his cat and went at it.
Some time later, a buzz went through the likeminded community at the institute of noise forum dealing with line6 equipment. There was a new dog in town and it barked like we never heard before. I myself heard the buzz and it sounded marvelous, also being slightly frustrated at the Vetta, which used to be the best, but didn't quite deliver. Soon valued members started defecting and other members that had gone back to tubes (cue Sean again) started appearing in the Fractal forum.
Cliff created the Axe-fx for himself, like the IBM president he was rumored to have thought he would only sell like a couple of dozen.
Boy, was he wrong.
At that time he was still assembling axes in his garage. Seeing he probably was on a budget or thought it was good enough, he used the best DSP available. Bar one. There was one with more horsepower. As you all know his creativity has no bounds and seeing that demand was comfortable to say the least, why not adapt the Axe-fx for the best DSP, bar none. And thus the Ultra came into being. Thereby designating the earlier Axe-fx as Standard. This adaptation allowed for more effects and blocks and possibly even more guitarists wished to part with even more of their money for this model.
And so it progressed. Fractal moved on into outsourced production, development of their current product line and growth, encountering many obstacles along the way, including discontinued or simply late parts, rohs certification, etc. As it stands a remarkable performance and a true American dream. For as far as we know.
No insider knowledge so this is all if my nutty memory serves me well, some conjecture, assumption and interpolation included. Feel free to correct, add or comment.
Btw, I wrote this this morning, but Turkish internet wouldn't let me post it...