With a very satisfying array of second tier chipmakers under its belt, Advanced RISC Machines Ltd of Cambridge has landed its first major as a licensee of the ARM RISC in the shape of NEC Corp. NEC has signed to use the ARM as a microprocessor core for embedded application-specific integrated circuits for a wide range of applications. NEC will also fabricate and market the core worldwide and distribute development tools, software and documentation for the product. It looks as if Hitachi Ltd has done much better with its SH series than anyone expected and NEC decided that if it was not to be left in the dust in an important market, it needed a convincing product quickly – too quickly to develop it from scratch.Separately, NEC and its NEC Home Electronics Ltd unit said they would establish a new company to concentrate on developing and selling multimedia products. NEC Interchannel Ltd will focus on creating and selling CD-ROM-based multimedia products, starting out with 60 titles, and a target of $20m sales for the fiscal year ending March 31 1996. And within three years, it is hoping to have annual sales of $100m.
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