The ARM architecture has a good share of the mobile market and many different models have been used with everything from smartphones to PDAs, and lately smartbooks. One of the latest CPUs is the Cortex-A8 used by e.g. Apple iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre. These mobile phones holds the frequency at 600MHz but ARM is now working on a considerably faster model that my come to power more powerful mobile phones and perhaps even future smartbooks.
Using TSMC’s 40nm-G manufacturing technology a dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU could reach clock frequencies over 2GHz.
The two Cortex-A9 MPCore hard macro implementations for the TSMC 40nm-G process, enable silicon manufacturers to have a rapid and low risk route to silicon for high-performance, low-power Cortex-A9 processor-based devices. The speed-optimized hard macro implementation will enable devices to operate at frequencies greater than 2GHz.
When ARM’s new GHz models of Cortex-A9 arrives remains to be seen, but smartbooks are becoming all the more attractive with faster hardware. Qualcomm and its Snapdragon processors are also hot alternatives for future smartbooks.
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