Digital Equipment Corp’s semiconductor business – now trading as Digital Semiconductor – has decided that the Alpha RISC design is inappropriate for emerging low-end embedded applications, and it has joined the growing band of licensees of the Advanced RISC Machines Ltd ARM RISC. A new high-performance family of StrongARM RISCs fully software-compatible with ARM 6, 7 and 8 and retaining their low power consumption is to be developed; the first product is currently being designed at DEC’s Palo Alto and Austin research centres and at Advanced RISC’s Cambridge, UK base. They are expected to be among the first products to be manufactured at DEC’s new FAB 6 plant in Hudson, Massachusetts. Apple Computer Inc’s Newton engineering team has been working with DEC and Advanced RISC on definition of the StrongARM family and plans to use it in future iterations of the Newton. As well as Personal Digital Assistants, other target applications include television set-top decoders, video games systems – the present 3DO Multiplayers all use the ARM RISC, and digital imaging applications, including image capture, scanning and printing. Acorn Computer Group Plc also plans to use the StrongARM in its future personal computers, and its Online Media spin-off also plans to use the chips in future television set-top boxes. Processors and processor cores will be available for licensing to other the ARM semiconductor partners, which include VLSI Technology Inc, GEC Plessey Semicoductors Ltd, Sharp Corp, Samsung Electronics Co, Cirrus Logic Inc and Texas Instruments Inc.
