Intel Drops StrongARM Name

Electronics Weekly -- 2/18/2003

Intel Corp. is to drop the StrongARM name on products in 12 months time. Instead all the StrongARM-based products will be branded X-Scale.

Intel picked up the StrongARM technology when it took over DEC's microelectronics business, which had taken an architecture license from ARM Ltd.

Last year, Intel opened a European software lab to support translation of StrongARM code to its XScale processor.

"The lab is designed to help get independent software vendors from StrongARM to XScale," Mark Miller of Intel told Electronics Weekly . "There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of applications optimized for Strong-ARM."

Although both processors are ARM-based, Intel -- which owns both designs -- said differences warrant re-optimization when porting code. The lab will be situated at Intel's existing wireless facility in Stockholm, Sweden.

Intel has a number of software tools to assist converting StrongARM, and also x86, code to run on XScale.

"There are a lot of people coming over from PCs to XScale," Miller said.

Electronics Weekly is the London-based sister publication of Electronic News.

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