RiscPC ARM 610, ARM 710 and StrongARM processors

ARM 610

The ARM 610 processor board was the original ARM processor that shipped in the RiscPC 600 and it was clocked at 30MHz or 33MHz. The board that was fitted to my RiscPC is clocked at 30MHz which is derived from a 60MHz oscillator on the ARM610 PCB.

The ARM610 was the in the first first group of ARM processor designs (ARMv3) and as such was the first example of an ARM processor that supported a full 32-bit address space.

The processor sported a 4KB cache.

ARM 710

The ARM 710 was an evolution of the ARMv3 architecture which could be clocked faster and provided an 8KB cache. The ARM710 processor currently fitted to my RiscPC is clocked at 40MHz derived from an on board 80HMz oscillator.

StrongARM

The StrongARM processor was the first ARM processor to be co-designed by a third party, DEC.  It implemented the ARMv4 architecture and provided a significant performance increase over the ARM 600 and 700 series processors that orignially shipped with the RiscPC. DEC eventually transferred the StrongARM processor design to Intel as part of a legal settlement.

StrongARM was a complete processor upgrade rather than an evolutionary step and the move to the ARMv4 architecture introduced some compatiblity issues with RISC OS on the RiscPC. As such, Acorn released RISC OS 3.70 which included support for the StrongARM processor. Several third party applications that ran on RISC OS also had to be rebuilt to provide StrongARM support.

Clock speeds for the StrongARM processor ranged from 160MHz to 233MHz and the processor in the photo's below is an example of a 200MHz StrongARM board. A StrongARM clocked at 233MHz provided an approximate performance increase of 800% over the ARM610 processor.