What is Advanced RISC Computing (ARC)?
Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) is a computer manufacturing specification that never resulted in fully compliant computers being made. It was conceived by a consortium of manufacturers, the Advanced Computing Environment (ACE) project. After establishing the standard, sometimes referred to as the MIPS-RISC-based computer hardware and firmware environment, the project is no longer active.
A modified version of the Advanced RISC Computing specification continues to be used by Silicon Graphics (SGI) in its systems running IRIX 6.1 or higher operating systems developed by SGI and starting from an ARCS console, where ARCS is the ARC firmware . Most RISC-based computers using Windows NT operating systems use versions of ARC boot consoles. Some of these computers include the MIPS Magnum Workstation, some Alpha-based machines with a pre-1999 PCI bus, the IBM RS / 6000 40P, and other Windows NT-enabled PowerPC computers.
Other computer products that conform at least in part to the ARC specification include some of those manufactured by Alpha, i386, and some of MIPS 'products.