ARC announces additions to core family

ARC International has announced new releases of its ARC 700 processor core family, with better performance in both Dhrystone MIPS (DMIPS) and frequency. ARC claims that it now delivers the industry's most efficient, high performance cores in terms of DMIPS per silicon-die-area and DMIPS per power budget.

The ARC 700 core family incorporates RTL improvements in the core's execution pipeline and other critical paths. The cores also support standard cell and memory libraries. They have increases of up to 33% in processor clock frequency and up to 69% in Dhrystone MIPS, while retaining the smallest die area and lowest power in their performance classes.

The ARC 750D core, which can be synthesised, is ARC's top end processor in the 700 family. It offers a clock frequency of up to 533MHz and DMIPS performance of 813 on a 0.13ìm process. This DMIPS score is said to outperform the competing ARM 1136J-S core while offering much lower die area and power consumption.

The new versions of the ARC 700 core family became available to new licensees at the end of August. New cores are also available as a maintenance release to all ARC 700 family licensees with current maintenance agreements for no additional charge.