Looking to bring the power of today’s desktop PCs to mobile device functionality, ARM has announced the Cortex A8 processor, which it says will “revolutionise consumer and low-power mobile devices”.
The application processor is designed to enable smart phones and other high-end consumer devices expected to make their debut in 2007 and 2008, delivering very high performance, including functions such as video and audio, but using very low power, ARM said.
The company has already announced that its licensees Texas Instruments, Freescale, Samsung, and Matsushita have signed on to create next generation products using Cortex-A8.
The processor delivers up to 2,000 Dhrystone Mips on a power budget of less than 300mW at the 65-nanometre node. At that node it will take up a very cost effective 4mm of silicon, according to Kerry McGuire, ARM product manager.
“This is one of the most significant investments we’ve brought to the processor market,” she said. “It combines several technologies developed inside of ARM and represents a significant investment across our markets.”
The core is the first applications processor based on the next-generation ARMv7 architecture, and features Thumb-2 technology to improve performance, energy efficiency and code density. It also includes the first implementation of Neon signal processing extensions to accelerate media codecs such as H.264 and MP3.
Other technologies included are Jazelle-RCT Java acceleration technology, TrustZone technology for secure transactions and digital rights management (DRM), and IEM capability for low power.
As these new processors come online, they will replace ARM 11 in the high end smart phones. Mid-range phones are expected to continue to use the ARM 11 processors, McGuire said.
www.arm.com