ARM comes of age with a major PC design breakthrough this
week.
The Cambridge-based company will see a microprocessor based on one
of its low power cores sitting side-by-side with an Intel Core Duo
in a Dell laptop PC.
The key to ARM's success is Dell's plan to run Linux as a second
rapid boot operating system on its Windows latptop.
ARM has grown to become the leading developer of low power
processor cores for mobile handsets and other types of
battery-powered equipment.
Its success in this market against larger rivals such as Intel
has prompted the company to develop a range of higher performance
processors cores aimed at non-mobile applications including PCs,
netbooks and digital set-top boxes.
Last week it announced a hard macro version of its Cortex-A9
MPCore processor for laptop designs.
See:
ARM produces hard Cortex A9 for high performance
The design-in announced today with Dell is the first major
breakthrough for ARM in the mainstream PC market.
The high-end laptop called the Latitude Z will use the ARM-based
processor to run a second Linux based operating system which will
allow the machine to boot up quickly for specific applications such
as music and video playing.
The PC runs Windows 7 on a 1.4GHz Intel Core Duo processor as
its main CPU.
Still this marks a significant design win for ARM which finds
itself sitting side-by-side with its main processor rival in a big
brand name PC.
Other features of the machine are its slim profile and low power
operation. There is also a $400 option for inductive charging,
which would do away with the traditional wired charger.
See:
Nokia deal puts Linux at heart of Intel's mobile
plans