Archos, the French portable media player company, claims to have developed one of the first implementations of the ARM Cortex superscalar microprocessor running under Linux in its latest product, an Internet Media Table.

This is seen as an early entry by an ARM-based device into the mobile Internet device (MID) market which is likely to be the main target for Intel's Atom processor later this year.

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.