Bought by a British group world leader in embarked microelectronics, the sophipolitan firm will conceive hearts of secure processors for e-commerce.
The sophipolitan firm EuroMIPS Systems, founded by Pascal Peru in December 1994 (14 employees, a 7 million franc turnover in 1999) is about to become the e-commerce design center of one of the world biggest groups dealing with microelectronics. The British firm ARM (500 employees), quoted at the Nasdaq and at the London Stock Exchange, recently bought EuroMIPS Systems with the aim of opening this new center which will be in charge of 'developing a secure implementation of its traditional services following the 32 bits technology', a release announced.
'Design new highly secure solutions'
ARM, not very known is a leading supplier in the field of solutions integrating embarked RISC microprocessors 16/32 bits. Those processors do not need a lot of energy. They are also dealing with cellular phones, Palm Pilot, digital cameras, hard disks installed in cars …The ARM technology is also very present in secure computer science.
ARM already knew EuroMIPS because they already worked together. A first collaboration occurred three years ago in the European Cascade project, lead with Gemplus for the development of a multi-applications chip cards, compatible with Java technology. Last year the relationship had reinforced and had allowed to bring to OEM manufacturers solutions based on chip systems (SoC) for their ARM Powered applications (chip cards, wireless solutions…)
According to Warren East, ARM operations vice-president, 'e-commerce is becoming more and more popular and needs in transaction security on the web, as for any cellular equipment are more and more important. Suppliers in equipment and software will have to develop and design new highly security solutions. Thanks to the purchase of EuroMIPS and thanks to the opening of our new e-commerce design center, ARM will suggest to our partners leading solutions for a large range of applications for which it is necessary to ensure security.'
EuroMIPS is about to become ARM France
Pascal Peru, who was looking for means or solutions to develop his firm has chosen to become a partner of a big group. 'ARM wanted to enter the market of e-commerce security. We bring to the group our experience and abilities in this field and we help it at the same time to settle in Sophia Antipolis where a great number of its clients are (Texas Instruments, Philips VLSI, Conextant, Lucent, IBM, Cadence, etc) and near Le Rousset with SC microelectronic, Atmel, Gemplus.'
'EuroMIPS will soon become ARM France. Which will bring in Sophia Antipolis a new registered office. The sophipolitan settlement should develop very fast. We will conceive hearts of secure processors. At the end of the year the firm should reach a 20 people staff and soon from 40 to 50 employees.