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Release notes

This is a release notes page of 2026.03 version of the GNU Toolchain for DesignWare ARC 600, ARC 700, EM, HS3x/4x, HS5x, HS6x and ARC-V processors.

More information about ARC-V processors can be found on Synopsys website on Power-Efficient RISC-V Processors for Embedded Applications and on Maximum Performance Efficiency for Real-time Applications.

Binary distributions may be found on the GitHub Release Page.

Toolchain and IDE Components Versions

  • GCC 15.2 with ARC patches
  • Binutils 2.45.1 with ARC patches
  • GDB 17.1 with ARC patches
  • Newlib 4.5.0 with ARC patches
  • Picolibc 1.8.11 with ARC patches
  • uClibc-ng v1.0.55 with ARC patches
  • glibc 2.42 with ARC patches

This release of GNU toolchain is supported by CGEN IPlib (TCF generator) version 1.0.53 and later.

New Features and Enhancements

ARC-V targets:

  • Performance tuning for ARC-V targets with -mtune=arc-v-rmx-500-series and -mtune=arc-v-rpx-100-series
  • Implemented experimental loop optimization improvements
  • Added support of LTO for APEX intrinsics
  • Added support of RVA23 profile
  • Updated support of XARCV to v1.8.1 specification
  • Added Buildlib tool for building target libraries

ARC Classic targets:

  • Added experimental support of Picolibc for ARC Classic targets

Binary distribution

  • Supported host operating systems: Windows 11 64-bit, Ubuntu 22.04, RHEL/AlmaLinux 8.x
  • Prebuilt bare-metal toolchains for 64-bit Windows & Linux hosts, see table with references and list of artifacts below.

Toolchain Components

For this release binary distributions of ARC GNU tools for all supported processor families (both ARC Classic and ARC-V) are produced from the same sources of corresponding tools.

Here is a list of GitHub issues addressed in this release: GitHub issues for 2026.03. Note, though, this list only contains issues filed against ARC GNU toolchain. Bugs and enhancements made in upstream open-source projects of each toolchain component could be found in the corresponding bug-tracking system.

Known issues

ARC Classic

  1. Newlib's libgloss doesn't support RF16 configuration of ARC cores when building for nSIM with -specs=nsim.specs, see #231. Use -specs=hl.specs instead for RF 16 configurations.

  2. Non-multilib toolchain doesn't contain libgloss libraries for nSIM and development boards, see #262.

  3. libcrypt.so.1 is not included in the toolchain (starting from glibc 2.38 libcrypt.so.1 is not built by default and will be removed from glibc in the future), please use libcrypt implemented by external libraries such as libxcrypt instead of relying on Glibc internal implementation.

  4. Eclipse IDE for ARCompact does not support selecting -specs= options in project's configuration menu. Consider passing this options (e.g., -specs=nsim.specs for nSIM) in "ARC GNU Linker" field of projects configuration dialog (C/C++ Build -> Settings -> Top Settings -> ARC GNU Linker).

ARC-V

  1. Some complex combinations of -march= and -mabi= options may lead to unpredictable errors during compilation. Such issues are related to general support of RISC-V extensions in GCC. Refer #610 for details.

  2. The size-optimized Newlib Nano configuration (used when -specs=nano.specs is passed to GCC) does not support printf() for float and double by default. Nano printf() is size-optimized and does not include support of float and double. If you need that feature, pass -u _printf_float to GCC when you compile your applications. This option picks up support of float and double for size optimized printf() on demand.

  3. Using selective scheduler with a specific set of options may lead to incorrect code generation. Refer Bug 118153 for details.