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Release notes

This is a release notes page of 2026.09 version of the GNU Toolchain for MIPS ARC 600, ARC 700, EM, HS3x/4x, HS5x, HS6x and ARC-V processors.

More information about ARC-V processors can be found on the MIPS ARC-V webpage.

Binary distributions may be found on the GitHub Release Page.

Toolchain and IDE Components Versions

  • GCC 16.2 with ARC patches
  • Binutils 2.45.1 with ARC patches
  • GDB 17.1 with ARC patches
  • Newlib 4.6.0 with ARC patches
  • Picolibc 1.8.11 with ARC patches
  • uClibc-ng v1.0.57 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

  • Performance tuning for ARC-V RPX-100 and ARC-V RMX-500
  • Improved floating-point performance for ARC-V targets
  • Added initial ARC-V RMX-700 support
  • Added experimental Zicfilp & Zicfiss (CFI) support for ARC-V targets
  • Added preliminary MIPS M8500 support

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 2026.09. 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).

  5. Using of archs target (when CUR_CORE=archs is used in project's configuration) in embARC OSP repository may lead to build errors. archs target for nSIM does not support caches but platform's code cannot detect it and tries to call arc_cache_init even if it's not declared. Using of CUR_CORE=archs38_smp resolves the issue.

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.