Elstree, England and Tokyo, Japan:
ARC International and Toshiba entered into a strategic collaboration aimed at growing the worldwide semiconductor industry's adoption of configurable technology. Under terms of the agreement, Toshiba grabbed a multiyear license for ARC's ARChitect processor configurator, which offers a set of design tools and resources using a drag-and-drop graphical user interface (GUI).

The companies also expect to collaborate on a next-generation version of ARChitect that's more closely suited to Toshiba's proprietary configurable processor called the Media embedded Processor (MeP). It's expected to provide the benefits of configurability to a wider range of customers. MeP, the core of Toshiba's media-centric processors, offers a 32bit configurable, asymmetric multiprocessor design. It can be customised to support diverse media applications, including products in the high-growth digital consumer market that integrates video and audio functionality.