ARM Cortex A9 is the architecture behind the next generation mobile processor and as previously revealed we will be seeing dual-core models at up to 2GHz consuming as little as 0.25W per core. This makes Intel’s energy efficient Atom processor look like a power hungry monster and now ARM wants to show that it has not held back on the performance despite the much lower power consumption of Cortex A9.
During a video comparison published at Youtube ARM has compared two systems where one uses a 1,66GHz Atom CPU while the second uses a dual-core Cortex A9 running at only 500MHz.
The test shows some simple web browsing, which is one of the most common uses for devices using these CPUs. Even though the test platform with Cortex A9 doesn’t get any help from a GPU it still does surprisingly well despite the low clock frequency.
When and how we will be seeing the Cortex A9 architecture on the market is uncertain. The Cortex A8 architecture is used by many smartphones, e.g. Apple iPhone, but also the newer Snapdragon processors from Qualcomm is based on this architecture.
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