Before Christmas we will see a new generation of smartphones based on ARM’s processor architecture that will offer previously unimagined performance with mobile phones. We will see processors with clock frequencies up to 1GHz in mobile phones, but that’s just the start. Next year, though near the end of 2010, ARM hopes that its new dual-core Cortex A9 CPU architecture will make it to the market.
In an interview with TechRadar Rob Coombs, director of mobile solutions at ARM, revealed that there is a chance Cortex A9 will have to wait until 2011 before it makes it into any consumer products. But at the same time he admits that the new mobile CPUs are probably enough to get around today.
It coming dual-core processor architecture enables programmers to a lot more, opening new doors for functionality and possibilities.
”They will allow user interfaces to be a bit more reactive, with some cool and weird options. For instance, if future mobiles rely on speech recognition, which is a processor hogging application, we can deal with that.”
Other demanding tasks include HD video and Flash playback. ARM has already tested the new architecture at speeds up to 2GHz, but this is way above the speeds we will see inside mobile phones. It will simply consume too much power and emit too much heat, but at the same time it is curious about netbooks. And he adds they are ”always talking to Microsoft”, not to mention Google and its coming Chrome OS.
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