ARC International Announces Early Adopter Program For New ARC-Based Multimedia Subsystems

Access to Industry's First Multi-Standard Video and Audio Subsystems Now Available to Limited Number of OEM and Semiconductor Companies

ELSTREE, England, April 18, 2005 – ARC International (LSE: ARK) today kicked off its Early Adopter (EA) program for the company's upcoming multimedia subsystems. All will include multi-standard video and audio codecs (encoders and decoders) as well as other must-have technologies critical to high-growth consumer applications. ARC's Multimedia EA program is open to a limited number of OEM and semiconductor companies, and enables participants to be the first to market with an industry leading multimedia subsystem that is designed to offer the lowest power consumption and smallest silicon footprint of any in the industry.

"ARC is pleased to announce the next family of industry leading multi-standard multimedia subsystems to satisfy the power, cost and time-to-market requirements of today's consumer-based SoCs," said Dan Davis, director of multimedia solutions at ARC International. "Participants in ARC's Multimedia EA program have special access to optimized technologies that will reduce time-to-market parameters by providing pre-verified subsystems targeted at this high-volume market. ARC's complete range of video, imaging and audio codecs will give our licensees the ability to create compelling products that provide an extremely high quality multimedia user experience. These multimedia subsystems illustrate ARC's commitment to providing pre-validated technologies, enabling our customers to capture greater market share in the highly competitive consumer marketplace."

ARC's Multimedia Subsystem Roadmap
ARC International's multimedia solutions are comprised of the new ARCmedia™ and ARCsight™ subsystems, which will be optimized to eliminate porting of a wide range of algorithms. Video codecs will include H.264 baseline and main profiles, Windows Media® Video 9, MPEG-4 simple and advanced simple profiles, and MPEG-2 main profile at main level. A comprehensive list of imaging codecs also will be included, as will audio codecs such as MP3, Windows Media Audio, AAC and AC-3.

Both multimedia subsystems are based upon ARC's preconfigured 32-bit processor core, a SIMD engine to optimally handle parallelized tasks, and hardware acceleration blocks for compute-intensive algorithms such as motion estimation and entropy encoding. Each subsystem will be independent of the system CPU and will work with industry standard bus interfaces.

Availability

ARC's Multimedia EA program is open now to qualified OEM and semiconductor companies. Visit www.arc.com/multimedia for more information.

About ARC International plc

ARC International is the world leader in low-power, high-performance 32-bit configurable CPU/DSP processor cores, subsystems, real-time operating systems and development tools for embedded system design. ARC's configurable and extendible cores assist customers in the development of next generation digital media, consumer and communications devices, resulting in lower cost, higher performance SoC products.

ARC International maintains a worldwide presence with corporate offices in San Jose, California, USA and Elstree, UK. The company has research and development offices located in England and the United States. For more information please visit the ARC website at: www.ARC.com. ARC International is listed on the London Stock Exchange as ARC International plc (LSE: ARK).

ARC, the ARC logo, ARCsound, ARCsight, ARCmedia and ARC-Based are trademarks or registered trademarks of ARC International. All other brands or product names contained herein are the property of their respective owners. This press release may contain certain "forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties. For factors that could cause actual results to differ, visit the company's website as well as the listing particulars filed with the United Kingdom Listing Authority and the Registrar of Companies in England and Wales. Certain applications mentioned in this press release may require additional licenses from third party patent holders.