No new CTO for ARC, more emphasis on software

No new CTO for ARC, more emphasis on software
By Chris Edwards, EE Times UK
March 15, 2002 (6:50 a.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020315S0005

ARC International will not appoint a chief technical officer (CTO) to replace Keith Diefendorff, who left to join competitor MIPS Technologies at the beginning of this year.

Instead, as part of a move that has seen the company recruit a substantially new and US-based management team, ARC plans to add a US-based engineering manager in the near future.

Mike Gulett, ARC's CEO, joined from Virata earlier this year and is based in the US himself. He says the CTO role has been eliminated.

"All of the new execs are US-based. We will appoint a vice-president of worldwide engineering in 60 days," he told EETimes.

Gulett says the choice of a US base for the company's engineering head will have no bearing on its UK operation at Elstree.

"Half of our engineers are in North America. The other half are in the UK at Elstree. Elstree is a very important engineering centre for us," said Gulett.

More emphasis on softw are

As part of the company's plan to combine its hardware and software product lines under the ARC name, it is putting more emphasis on software development for a series of bundled hardware core and software tools products for vertical markets.

"We intend to deliver targeted configurations of the software," Gulett said.

"About half our engineers work on the processor [hardware] and we don't see that changing. We will be bringing in protocol stacks through partnerships as well as internal development."

Farzad Zarrinfar, vice-president of marketing, said: "We will provide customers with a platform, a software stack, an RTOS and the integration."