Has chip designer ARM stolen enough of our headlines this week? Apparently not, as it is promising more milestones in world embedded-RISC domination, coming October 21. ARM already has the lion’s share of the smartphone market, and it is fast expanding into the burgeoning smartbook area too. Clearly, that’s not enough…
The would be mega-corporation for mini-cores has confirmed to journalists that it will make a “hugely significant announcement on 21st October, which will extend the company’s low-power leadership further by bringing Internet connectivity to the next billion of mobile users.” That’s no small beans.
ARM doesn’t go into great detail about what it has planned, but does admit it will unveil the “smallest, most energy-efficient and lowest cost multicore processor that will deliver full Internet capability”. The chip will target smartphones and low cost mobile devices (ie smartbooks) and ARM adds that it will be fully compatible with the Cortex-A8 (as seen in the Palm Pre and iPhone 3GS) and Cortex-A9 CPUs. Furthermore there will be native support for Android, Ubuntu, Linux, Microsoft Windows Embedded, Symbian and Adobe Flash.
Hardware won’t be the only focus though since the ‘Mali Developers Centre’ – a massive resource for developers to help them design cutting edge graphics applications across multiple platforms – will get its public debut.
So when will we get the full facts? At ARM TechCon3 in Santa Clara, USA on 21 October. With the ambition outlined in this preview alone, we can’t wait to see what ARM and its partners have cooked up…
Gordon
