ARC Comes Into Its Own

At the ConfigCon Silicon Valley 2007 developer conference, Intel Architect, Jeffrey Hoffman, described in his keynote address an ARC-Based™ silicon solution that could deliver a handset providing multimedia on any device, and any network, via a 65nm test chip offering WiMAX, WiFi, and DVB-H.

ARC got its very first licence as a potential enabler of wireless telephony when Fujitsu’s wireless group in Manchester (largely staffed by ex-Ferranti engineers), which was working on the first iteration of a Wi-Fi chip-set for Intel, wanted to use the ARC core.

Unwilling to ask Tokyo for permission, the local Fujitsu-ites paid ARC the maximum amount of money they were allowed to sign off for without reference to Tokyo, believed to be in the region of $250,000.