Not much happened at the ARM (LON:ARM) TechCon in Santa Clara last week, but on the final day ARM announced its latest architecture change called ARMJ8 that includes a brand new 64 bit instruction set.
ARM has not yet released a lot of details to the public about the instruction set, but if you sign up for a license for a ginormous amount of money, it is willing to spill the beans.
The most interesting bit about the new architecture is probably that it will remain compatible with the existing 32 bit instruction set. This is done through an instruction that allows you to switch from one instruction set to another.
ARM has not yet announced any customers that have signed up for the new processor, but expects to do so by early next year. This will be followed by actual processors from these customers and hardware that we as end users can get our hands on. All this should happen in 2014 if everything goes as planned.
With the introduction of the 64 bit instruction set ARTM is on par with Intel as well as several MIPS customers that have also implemented a 64 bit instruction set.S|A
Mads Ølholm
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