Sharp Electronics Corp announces from its base in Camas, Washington that it is set to begin shipments of its version of the Advanced RISC Machines Ltd ARM610 microprocessor, the LH74610, for use in consumer and embedded applications. High volume production has begun at its fabrication facility in Fukuyama, Japan. The company reckons that the Japanese fab provides the manufacturing capacity that has been lacking in the ARM partnership, and can supply the powerful, low-cost microprocessors in quantities that will meet expected demand. Sharp has organised a US product team in Camas to provide technical support for the LH74610 as a standard part. It offers a software tool kit for code development without supporting hardware, at $1,000, $300 for a limited time; a hardware-software development kit is $2,000. Samples of the LH74610 are available now with volume in May at $25.50 for 10,000-up. Sharp is also set to combine the ARM7 core with its static RAM, EEPROM and mask ROM memory technologies on a single die for space and power savings for portable ap plications. Sharp’s plans for the ARM processors in clude a series of applicat ion-specific standard prod ucts using the ARM7 core, and 3.3V version of ARM6.
