Cortex A9 will be available in a variety of costumes over the coming year. STMicroelectronic has presented the SPEAr1300 CPU that will be the world’s first dual-core Cortex A9 microprocessor with DDR3 interface.
STMicroelectronic SPEAr1300 is made with, fairly rudimentary 55 nanometer technology and developed specifically for the integrated market. The two cores operate at 600 MHz and is not designed for tablets or smartphones where we expect to see more of the Cortex A9 architecture.
Beside tablets and smartphones the ARM architecture have many possible uses and STMicroelectronics expect the processor to end up in everything from networking solutions to barcode readers.
Important functions of the new SPEAr1300 architecture include:
- Dual ARM Cortex-A9 cores, operating at 600MHz for 3000 DMIPS
- 64-bit AXI (AMBA3) Buss Network-on-chip technology
- DRAM and L2 cache with Error Correction Code (ECC)
- 32-bit 533MHz DDR3 memory buffer with ECC, and 16-bit DDR2
- Accelerator Coherency Port
- Gigabit Ethernet
- PCIe 2.0 * 5 GT / s (Gigatransfers / second)
- SATA II 3 Gb / s
- USB 2.0
- 256-bit encryption key
ARM’s Cortex A9 architecture is licensed by several major circuit manufacturers and with 40nm technology the architecture has been tested and confirmed at up to 2.0 GHz. When the first ultramobile Cortex A9 processors appears isn’t entirely certain, but both smartphones and tablets are expected in 2010, most likely clocked at 1.0-1.3 GHz.
