ARC International

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ARC International plc is a developer of configurable microprocessor technology. ARC develops synthesisable IP and licenses it to semiconductor companies.

The roots of ARC International date back to the early 1990s. The company was founded by Jez San to build upon the 3D accelerator technology previously developed for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System by a division of Argonaut Software. This forerunner to the ARC was originally called the Mario (Mathematical, Argonaut, Rotation & I/O) chip, later dubbed the SuperFX, it went on to sell millions. At the time out selling ARM or any other RISC core^[1].

Following the success of the SuperFX, its designers were split from the main company to a department called ATL (Argonaut Technology Limited). The design was renamed ARC (Argonaut RISC Core) and marketed as a general purpose, configurable, microprocessor. In 1998, ATL was rebranded ARC International and spun-off as a separate company.

The configurability of the ARC happens at design time (as opposed to run time) using the ARChitect processor configurator^[2]. The core was created in such a way that it is extensible. Unlike most embedded microprocessors you can add extra instructions, registers and functionality as if they were made from Lego. Customers look at the task they want to perform, analyse the task, break down the operations, and then choose the appropriate extensions (or create their own) to create their own custom microprocessor. They might optimise for speed, energy efficiency or code density. Extensions can include for example, an MMU, a fast multiplier with accumulate, a USB Host, a viterbi path decoder, etc. etc.

ARC ships approximately 300 million ARC-Based chips every year to embedded markets with over 140 customers. It hosts the ConfigCon^[3] series of seminars that occur round the world 3-4 times a year as part of its drive to "Enable the YouTube Generation".^{[4] [5] [6] [7]}

On September 21, 2000, ARC listed on the London Stock Exchange as ARK.^[8]

On June 17, 2002, ARC took over three companies, MetaWare, VAutomation, and Precise Software Technologies [1] but later parts were sold off to other companies.

On Apri1, 2007, ARC acquired Teja Technology of San Jose, California, a specialist in heterogeneous multiprocessor software.^{[9] [10]}

On June 14, 2007, ARC aquired Tenison Design Automation of Cambridge, UK, a provider of software tools used to help develop system-on-chip (SoC) designs.^{[11] [12]}

On September 23, 2007, ARC acquired Alarity Corporation of St, Petersburg, Russia, that specializes in codec software, firmware, and advanced multimedia architectures.^{[13] [14] [15]}

On February 11, 2008, ARC acquired Sonic Focus, a specialist developer of audio enhancement technology for digital sound ^[16].

[edit] White Papers on Configurability

• Toshiba, ARC in configurable processor collaboration, May 15, 2006
• SPF: All About Power, Performance, June 30, 2006
• ARCHITECTURES: Programmable ARC platform targets low-cost multimedia, October 2, 2006
• ARC adopts clustered parallelism in media multiprocessing, October 9, 2006

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official site
• ARC 600 Processor Family
• ARC 700 Processor Family
• ARC VRaptor Multicore Architecture
• ARC Sound - Simple Audio Processor
• ARC Sound Advanced - Complex Audio Processor
• ARC Video - D1 Video Decoder
• ARC Player - Video nano Clone
• ARC Linux.