ARC (specification)

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Not to be confused with
Argonaut RISC Core
.

Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) is a

RISC-based computer hardware and firmware environment. The firmware on Alpha machines that are compatible with ARC is known as AlphaBIOS, non-ARC firmware on Alpha is known as SRM.[dubious – discuss
]

History

Although ACE went defunct, and no computer was ever manufactured which fully complied with the ARC standard, the ARC system has a widespread legacy in that all operating systems in the Windows NT family use ARC conventions for naming boot devices.[1][2] SGI's modified version of the ARC firmware is named ARCS. All SGI computers which run IRIX 6.1 or later, such as the Indy and Octane, boot from an ARCS console, which uses the same drive naming conventions as Windows. Most of the various RISC-based computers designed to run Windows NT have versions of the ARC boot console to boot NT. These include the following:

  • MIPS R4000-based systems such as the MIPS Magnum workstation
  • all
    SRM console
    instead)
  • most Windows NT-capable
    RS/6000
    40P).

It was predicted that Intel IA-32-based computers would adopt the ARC console, although only SGI ever marketed such machines with ARC firmware (namely, the SGI Visual Workstation series, which launched in 1999).

Comparison with UEFI

Compared to UEFI, the ARC firmware also included support for FAT, boot variables, C-calling interface. It did not include the same level of extensibility as UEFI and the same level of governance like with the UEFI Forum.[3][third-party source needed]

List of partially ARC compatible computers

Products complying (to some degree) with the ARC standard include these:

References

  1. ISBN 9781285414980
    .
  2. ISBN 9780470327616
    .
  3. ^ "A Tale of Two Standards" (PDF).

External links

  • ARC on www.linux-mips.org
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