ARM Holdings, the world's leading computer microprocessor designer, has launched an international design centre at Walker Park, Blackburn.

The centre, which is scheduled to open next week , focuses on the development of advanced, high-performance tools for leading edge software technology.

The Design Centre is based on the expertise of Blackburn-based Noral Micrologics which was taken over by ARM earlier this year.

The 10-man engineering team from Noral forms the core of the new centre which joins other international centres in the United States, Germany, France, Israel, Japan, Taiwan and Korea.

Noral Micrologics was founded in 1983 to design and market embedded system development tools for a wide range of microprocessors.

Managing director Keith Norton said it had already been working closely with ARM before it joined the Group. "We look forward to working as part of the ARM development systems team," he said. "Our technology and expertise, gained from many years of designing hardware and software development tools, combined with ARM's industry-leading development solutions, will provide their partners with tool solutions that further reduce time-to-market and raise the level of design confidence."

ARM, which is one of Britain's top 100 companies, is the industry's leading providers of embedded RISC microprocessor solutions.

The company licenses its designs to leading international electronics companies. ARM microprocessors are becoming standard in markets such as mobile phones, hand-held computing, multimedia digital consumer and embedded solutions.

Derek Morris, development manager of ARM's development systems division, said the company was dedicated to providing best-in-class development tools for the ARM architecture.

"We have been extremely impressed with the Noral team's expertise and skills which bring more than 50 years of embedded debug tools experience to the ARM development systems team," he said.

"The combination of this acquisition and the recent purchase of Allant Software strengthens our engineering team, allowing us to further enhance the complete portfolio of ARM development tool products."