Advanced RISC Machines Ltd has unveiled the next iteration of its ARM RISC, the ARM8, saying it fits between the ARM7 and the new StrogARM. It will be available in the second half of next year from the Cambridge, UK companies’ licensees. It is aimed at the same mobile computing, digital television, second generation Personal Digital Assistant and multimedia applications, but ones that require higher performance. The part moves to a five-stage pipeline from the three-stage ARM7, so that execution is spread over more cycles, making higher clock frequencies possible, doubling performance to 80 MIPS at 3.3V but at the cost of larger die size and higher power consumption. The StrongARM will do 160 MIPS.
