New ARCangel development board supports up to 2.5 million system gates for soft processor-based SoC designs

Elstree, UK, 4 June 2001 - A new development platform supporting the latest available FPGA technology has been introduced by ARC International plc (LSE: ARK), trading through its subsidiaries as ARC Cores. The new ARCangel 3 allows designers to evaluate SoC systems based on ARCtangent-A4? processor systems integrated with other intellectual property (IP) for designs of over 2.5 million FPGA system gates.

The new development board is designed around an 1156 pin Xilinx (NASDAQ: XLNX) Virtex? XCV2000E, featuring up to 2,541,952 system gates, over 655,360 bits of block RAM and up to 804 user I/O pins. The board can also be upgraded to support the larger XCV2600E or XCV3200E FPGA devices. With this enlarged capacity, the new development platform easily supports integration of ARC?s 32-bit user-customisable processor with other logic and IP typically found in a complex SoC design. This allows comprehensive hardware-software debug and verification of different ARCtangent-A4 processor configurations, custom instructions, custom interfaces, multiple processor systems and additional IP blocks. The extensive user programmable I/O enables easy hardware debugging and interfacing to external prototyping cards and components.

The ARCangel 3 development board is fully supported by the MetaWare? software development tool set to allow rapid software development and hardware evaluation. By enabling application software development to begin early in the design cycle and provide performance feedback to the hardware design, ARCangel 3 allows developers to rapidly implement and debug an ARCtangent-A4 based system.

The ARCangel 3 carries interfaces for Ethernet and USB 1.1 ports allowing customers to evaluate and prototype systems that require these peripherals. The board can also be upgraded to support ARC?s Bluetooth? solution using a plug in card that supports Bluetooth radio cards. ARCangel 3 also features several types of memory that can be treated as one contiguous space or completely separate memories that can be used as system memory, external cache, or XY memory. Memory expansion options include off the shelf DIMM memories. The board also features non-volatile FLASH memory and configuration PROMs, allowing ARCangel 3 to be easily used as a demonstration platform. The board is designed to the industry standard NLX form factor and measures approximately 8?x11?.

Statements made in this press release that are not historical facts include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from those indicated by such forward-looking statements include, among others, market acceptance of the ARC technology; fluctuations in and unpredictability of the Company?s quarterly results; general economic and business conditions; regulatory policies adopted by governmental authorities; assumptions regarding the Company?s future business strategy; changes in technology; competition; ability to attract and retain qualified personnel; risks associated with the Company?s international operations; and other uncertainties that are discussed in the ?Investment Considerations? section of the Company?s listing particulars dated 28 September 2000 filed with the United Kingdom Listing Authority and the Registrar of Companies in England and Wales.

ARC International (UK) Ltd. and ARC Cores, Inc., both of which are wholly owned subsidiaries of ARC International plc, trade under the name of ARC Cores. ARC Cores, ARCtangent, ARCangel and ARChitect are trademarks of ARC International (UK) Ltd.