ARM acquires Keil

Keil operates jointly through two privately-owned companies, Keil Elektronik GmbH in Munich, Germany, and Keil Software, Inc. in Plano, Texas; and has combined gross assets valued at $4.6 million. "ARM identified the MCU market as a critical growth area for our future business and with this acquisition, we will be able to accelerate progress in that market by offering a more complete, more compelling solution," said Warren East, CEO, ARM. "As the MCU applications shift from 8/16-bit to 32-bit solutions, the combination of the ARM® Cortex™-M3 processor, which was specifically designed for microcontroller applications, our RealView® high-performance compiler, and Keil's complementary MCU tools for ARM, will enable new generations of ARM MCU solutions." The 23-person company manufactures and distributes a broad range of development tools including ANSI C compilers, macro assemblers, debuggers, linkers, library managers, firmware and real-time kernels. Currently there are more than 100,000 microcontroller developers using this industry-proven solution. "Keil and ARM have a long-standing relationship through our membership of the ARM Connected Community," said Reinhard Keil, CEO, Keil. "We feel that with this acquisition we are in a better position to deliver complete offerings to the high-growth, 32-bit microcontroller market while continuing to support our 8051 and C16x compilers within the uVision environment."