StrongARM

StrongARM

A family of high-performance RISC-based microprocessors from Intel. StrongARM chips have been used in handheld devices from PDAs to palmtops. Jointly developed by Digital Equipment Corporation and Advanced RISC Machines (ARM), Intel acquired Digital's chip manufacturing facilities in 1997 and continued making the chips to supersede its earlier i860 and i960 lines. The StrongARM technology evolved into Intel's Xscale line. See Xscale and ARM chips.

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(processor)

StrongARM - A collaborative project between Digital Equipment Corporation and Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. (ARM) announced on 1995-02-06 licensing the ARM RISC architecture to Digital Semiconductor for the development of high-performance, low power microprocessors. The StrongARM family of 32-bit RISC products developed under the agreement are faster versions of the existing ARM processors with a somewhat different instruction set. They are targetted at applications such as next-generation personal digital assistants with improved user interfaces and communications; interactive television and set-top products; video games and multimedia edutainment systems with realistic imaging, motion and sound; and digital imaging, including low cost digital image capture and photo-quality scanning and printing. The StrongARM family has limited software compatibility with the ARM6, ARM7 and ARM8 families due to its separate caches for data and instructions which causes self-modifying code to fail. The SA-110 is the first member of the family.