Jobs go but new processors coming at ARC

LONDON — ARC International (St Albans, England) is to lay off 35 employees and close several of its locations in a major restructuring that sees the licensor of multimedia IP cores reduced to 115 direct staff, excluding its Adaptive Chips joint venture in India. The company also revealed it is readying a new processing range that will be launched in November.

ARC said its 600 processor range, which on average uses 25 percent less power than its nearest competitor for embedded subsystem applications, will be the basis of an instruction-set compatible new generation development aimed at a further halving of power-performance ratio. The new processor range will be designated the ARC 6000 series.

Also in November, ARC plans to refresh its ARC 700 series of processors.

In a trading update Tuesday (June 30) ARC said current trading remains in line with expectations, with revenues within the target range of £6.0 million to £8.0 million ($9.0 million to $12.0 million) for the six months ended 30 June 2009.

The company said that while trading conditions remain challenging, with lengthy sales cycles, "we continue to sign deals and generate royalty revenues."

The restructuring involves the formation of an Advanced Software Group (ASG) in St Petersburg, Russia, based on the company's subsidiary, Alarity Inc., which will focus on new areas of IP as well as continuing its codec development.

An Advanced Technology Group (ATG) will also be established in ARC’s San Jose operation to focus on hardware development and systems IP.

The rationalization and makeover was signaled early last month following the departure of Carl Schlachte and the appointment of Geoff Bristow as CEO, who said at the time he would start with a strategic review of all operations.

ARC also said it will make "an immediate transition to virtualization and teleworking," such that its premises will only consist of the ASG, ATG, and a network of sales offices in St Albans, Israel, Russia, Taiwan and elsewhere.

All other existing ARC sites will close.

The company's five data centres will be rationalized into two, delivering an operational annualized cost saving of approximately £0.5 million from the second half of this year.

In addition, ARC will now be conducting two-way licensing deals with many of its customers and collaborators in a partnership strategy to be known as "IP-in/IP-out" in order to accelerate the time-to-market of its devices.