ARC International

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ARC International
Type	Digital IP
Founded	Elstree, England 1998
Headquarters	Elstree, England San Jose, CA
Key people	Carl Schlachte President and CEO Victor Young Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Craig Slayter Vice President & General Manager Derek Meyer Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing Paul Holt Vice President Customer Service and Quality David Doyle Vice President International Sales Tom Huppuch Senior Vice President and General Counsel Peter Hutton Senior Vice President and General Manager of Engineering Andy Jaros Vice President North America Sales
Industry	Digital IP Computer Processor Cores
Website	http://www.arc.com/

ARC International plc (traded on the London Stock Exchange, under ticker symbol ARK) is the world leader in configurable processor technology. ARC licenses patented configurable CPU/DSP processors and multimedia subsystems that enable customers to design products that give them a strategic competitive advantage in the marketplace. Using ARC's configurable cores and subsystems, licensees can develop highly differentiated ARC-Based™ system-on-chips (SoCs) that consume less power, are less expensive to produce and provide protection from cloning--distinct advantages over non-configurable, "fixed architecture" alternatives.

The roots of ARC International date back to the early 1990's. Originally Argonaut RISC Core, it was a hardware design division of Argonaut Software, which designed a configurable microprocessor core for use in embedded applications. One of the first uses was in 1993 for the Super FX chip used in Super Nintendo video games. It was spun-off as a separate company in 1998. As part of Argonaut, a software provider to leading game companies, the design team developed highly customized microprocessors. That technology and know-how to rapidly create customized designs evolved into configurable processors and eventually the ARChitect™ configurator tool.

Configurable processors are bringing about a revolution within the semiconductor industry by enabling semiconductor companies to create silicon that offers a strategic competitive advantage. As the world leader in configurable CPU/DSP cores and subsystems, ARC International is driving this revolution by bringing the benefits of configurability to chip companies worldwide.

Today, ARC's broad product portfolio is used by 130+ customers that collectively ship more than 100 million ARC-Based chips every year to high-growth embedded markets. They include wireless computing applications, mobile audio and video players, flash storage devices, digital set-top boxes, networking appliances, electronic toys and educational games, and government satellites. ARC International employs approximately 130 people in research and development, sales and marketing offices across North America, Europe and Asia.

ARC has two main lines of products: configurable and extendible processors as exemplified by the ARC 600 and ARC 700 families and media subsystems. The latter is fairly new and has only existed for two years.

The processors are described as configurable. What this means in reality is that not only can they have certain aspects "configured" in and out, for example an MMU, or a complex multiplier, but also that they can be extended. Extended means that they can have custom instructions, registers and condition codes added which will then form part of the basic ISA for the extended processor. The media subsystems cover audio and video applications and include the usual suspects such as MP3, AAC, MPEG2 and H.264. These seem to be getting a good reception, particularly in Asia.