Devices like the Apple iPhone 3GS, the Google HTC Nexus One and the Nokia N900 all run on the ARM Cortex A8 processor, albeit at different speeds. The A8 is a huge leap ahead in performance compared to the old ARM11 processors that have powered a majority of smartphones during the middle part of the last decade, but it still isn’t competitive with anything from Intel. The next generation of ARM processors however, the Cortex A9, as demonstrated in the video below, are highly competitive with Intel’s low end Atom processor.
ARM has always kicked Intel’s ass when it comes to power consumption too, so realistically speaking you can expect to be using a device the size of your mobile phone today, with as much power as the 10 inch netbooks on the market today, hopefully by the end of this year, if not than most definitely by in 2011. CES starts tomorrow and I’m personally most looking forward to hearing about the rumoured Cortex A9 powered nVidia Tegra 2. Expect to hear a lot more about Cortex A9 processors during Mobile World Congress in February.
[Via: Mac Rumours]
Update: Whoops, I forgot that the Nexus One uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon, which doesn’t have an ARM Cortex A8, but is still ARMv7 instruction set compatible. This isn’t the first time I’ve made this mistake. Mobile chipsets are not as easy to remember, specification wise, as their x86 counterparts.