ARM is going head-to-head with Intel in the ultra-mobile PC space, dubbed MIDs or mobile internet devices. Qualcomm, Texas Instruments (TI) and Nvidia are bringing out chip-sets using ARM which will run both Smartphones and MIDs.

"The MIDS market is a natural extension of the smartphone market, and already there's more Internet connectivity with smartphones than with laptops", Ian Drew, vice president of marketing at ARM, told Electronics Weekly.

Intel is risking a hiding in the MIDs market by fielding a chip, the Atom, which uses an order of magnitude more power than ARM's cores.

"We are one or two orders of magnitude better on passive power than Intel", said Drew, "we expect an ARM processor to last multiple weeks in standby mode, not days or hours. If you leave a laptop on standby overnight it will drain the battery but if you leave a Smartphone on you expect it to last days."

Earlier this week, in Taiwan, Nvidia demo-ed an ARM-based device giving 26 hours of video playback on one charge, while Intel showed machines with four to six hours battery life. Although Intel is hoping to cut power down in its next generation of Atom, that is two years away.

"ARM-based vendors will use this window of opportunity to establish market leadership positions," said Peter King, a director at Strategy Analytics, which reckons ARM devices will comprise the majority of MID sales for the next six years.

Asked why Intel can't match ARM for power efficiency, Drew responded: "Intel designs for MHz ARM has always designed for MHz per milliWatt, for power efficiency."

But Intel has had an ARM architecture licence since 1997, and produced ARM-based processors, which it called XScale, so why hasn't it learnt to do low-power?

"It's not one big thing," replied Drew, "it's lots of little things. It takes years of experience. But I'm sure they're trying to do it."

How does Drew respond to the claim of Intel CEO Paul Otellini, that Atom is a processor which gives a better Internet experience because of its x86 architecture?

"The Internet runs on software not on architecture X, or architecture Y, and the software companies are looking at the market and seeing that they must be in Smartphones," responds Drew, "if you buy a smartphone now, it won't be as Internet-enabled as the latest laptop, but give it another year or so, and it will be the same. Take the iPhone, its Internet access isn't perfect, but it's 99 per cent of the way there."

Asked what still needs to be done to make Smartphone access as good as laptop access, Drew replied: It needs some of the latest generation of plug-ins to be fully enabled, and the optimisation of some of the browsers."

Another curious claim from Otellini is that ARM users don't have access to the latest technology. With TSMC, a foundry used by ARM licensees TI and Qualcomm among many others, moving to risk production on 32nm next year, it is more likely that Intel will be lagging in access to the latest technology than ARM's customers.

Both of the world's two biggest wireless chip companies, TI and Qualcomm, are going to base their MIDs strategy on ARM.

Seshu Madhavapeddy, general manager of TI's Mobile Internet Devices division, said that MIDS devices, in many form factors, based on TI's OMAP 3 processor, which uses an ARM core, will be launched this year. And the Qualcomm chipsets targeting MIDS are based on 1GHz ARM processors.

The fact that ARM has over 200 licences for its cores means that the architecture has undergone huge innovation over the years. "Most of our cores are designed to be flexible in lots of different ways", said Drew, "it's the benefit of having 3bn cores shipped each year by our partners. A lot of value is added by our partners. A TI part for instance, will be different to a Qualcomm part to target slightly different markets. That's very powerful compared to being one monolith."

Another advantage of the ARM model of licensing loads of companies is that the end customer can go to multiple sources for an ARM chip.

Going for an Atom is to go to one supplier, Intel, which has no second sources. That puts customers at the mercy of a single supplier's ability to deliver, pricing structure and roadmap.

The world which suffered for two decades under the imposition of the x86 monopoly, will not readily volunteer to suffer again by adopting another sole-sourced microprocessor.

And ARM’s next trick? The server market, apparently. Worried by the huge amounts of power the server farms are gobbling, the server manufacturers are said to be thinking about putting ARM chips in their machines.

“We’ve had initial discussions with a few people”, said Drew, “if you look at the power consumption, it makes sense for them to use ARM.”

See also: Electronics Weekly's focus on microprocessors, a roundup of content on microprocessor technologies and developments not related to the x86 architecture (from ARM, Texas Instruments and MIPS).

See also: Electronics Weekly's focus on microprocessors, a roundup of content related to x86 microprocessor technologies and developments.