ARM TO EXTEND FAMILY WITH ARM8 HIGH PERFORMANCE ARCHITECTURE 
ARM processors compatible across a large performance/price range 

Cambridge, UK. Nov. 27th, 1995 -- Coinciding with its fifth birthday, 
Advanced RISC Machines Ltd (ARM) announced that it is making a powerful 
extension to the ARM family.  The ARM8 architecture will extend ARM's 
product portfolio by filling the gap between the elegantly minimal, 
embeddable ARM7 RISC cores and the very high performance StrongARM 
processor. 

As a result ARM offers a completely software compatible solution across 
the entire performance range.  Through ARM's unique partnership model, 
designers now have access to a broad spectrum of application knowledge 
and experience at each performance level. 

The new ARM8 architecture is aimed at systems which will benefit from a 
high performance cached processor, but are still sensitive to system 
power consumption and cost.  Target applications include: high-end 
mobile-computing, digital TV, second generation PDAs and multimedia 
applications. 

Most high integration, real time, applications are best addressed by the 
ARM7TDMI, which, with the  Thumb' code compression extension, is class 
leading in terms of cost, performance and area efficiency.  ARM8 will 
step in where even greater performance is required. 

The most significant change in ARM8 is extending the core pipeline to 
five stages, from three in the ARM7.  This results in execution being 
spread over more cycles, reducing the  amount of work done at each stage 
and thus allowing higher clock rates.  The increased speed comes at the 
expense of increased die size and power consumption, but with twice the 
performance, ARM8 will maintain ARM's excellent MIPS/Watt and MIPS/mm2 
ratios. 

ARM's CEO, Robin Saxby, commented "ARM8 further strengthens our high end 
coverage for the growing body of OEMs standardising on the ARM family.   
ARM7, ARM8 and StrongARM are different implementations for different jobs 
and complement each other well in fleshing out ARM's ability to satisfy a 
wide range of customer performance needs.  Consequently we will continue 
to develop and sell all three architectures for a long time to come. 

"Available in 2H96 from ARM's licensed partners, the ARM810 will be the 
first product to implement the ARM8 architecture.  Designed to a process 
portable 0.5 micron rule-set, the fully static ARM810 can be implemented 
as an embedded core within an application specific design or as a 
stand-alone microprocessor.  The ARM810 will be capable of  80 MIPS at 
3.3 V and so fits nicely between the 40 MIPS ARM710 and upcoming 
StrongARM that will better 160 MIPS.