A leaked PDF document [2.4 MB file] from November 2009, which is nearly half a year ago, has just surfaced and it shows Samsung’s roadmap for ARM processors destined for netbooks. The South Korean firm points to the current netbook computing landscape as Windows + Intel, which has been that way since as long as I could remember, and they predict that the future will be either ARM + Ubuntu or ARM + Chrome OS. That’s a pretty bold conclusion, but judging by how well the iPad has been received, there seems to be a market for a ~ $500 device that’s nothing more than a browser.
We get a glimpse of the chips that are going to be coming in the future, so without further ado:
- Codename Taurus (S5PV210) single core ARM Cortex A8 @ 1 GHz, sampling in Q1 2010, mass production in Q3 2010
- Codename Orion dual core ARM Cortex A9 @ 800 MHz, sampling in Q3 2010, mass production in Q1 2011
- Codename Pegasus single core ARM Cortex A9 @ 1 GHz, sampling in Q2 2011, mass production in Q4 2011
- Codename Hercules dual core ARM Cortex A9 @ 1 GHz, sampling in Q3 2011, mass production in Q1 2012
- Codename Mercury single core ARM Cortex A5 @ 600 MHz, due in either 2010 or 2011
- Codename Venus dual core ARM Cortex A5 @ 600 MHz, due in either 2012 or 2013
- Codename Draco dual core ARM Cortex A9 @ 1.2 GHz, due in either 2012 or 2013
- Codename Aquila quad core ARM Cortex Eagle @ 1.2 GHz, due in either 2012 or 2013
If Samsung works anything like Nokia, then a nearly 6 month old roadmap is absolutely useless, but hey, you never know, maybe the company will surpass these targets and we’ll all be using a quad core ARM based Samsung Chrome OS netbook by Christmas 2011. Note that these are processors meant for netbooks, so the roadmap for processors meant for mobile phones is probably a bit less aggressive in terms of performance.
[Via: EE Times]