ARM set out its next-generation processor design stall this week by unveiling a four-core CPU clocked at 1GHz. But chips featuring the Cortex-A9 technology will not arrive until 2010.However Nvidia, NEC, Texas Instruments, ST Microelectronics have reportedly committed themselves to employing the Cortex-A9 on future silicon - as have Samsung, who manufacture the ARM9 CPU for the RISC OS 4.42-powered A9home. The link between the names 'A9' are purely coincidental.
The Cortex-A9 chips will be bound for high-end hand-held gadgets that will be expected to juggle multimedia for increasingly demanding consumers. Single-core versions of the processor will also be made available for lower-end corners of the mobile and embedded markets.
A floating-point unit for the Cortex-A9 will provide also hardware-accelerated number crunching. The overall design pretty much follows the ARM and Acorn ethos of doing more with less - delivering as much processing power as possible while drawing only milliwatts.
In an interview, ARM CEO Warren East, pictured, played down suggestions future ARM-powered devices could have 'ARM inside' stickers slapped on them - as Acorn tried to do on RiscPCs. Despite Intel's recent interest in the mobile technology market, Warren added his company's latest development "is not an ARM versus Intel thing at all."
Links
Warren East interview on The Register
The ARM Cortex-A9 multi-processor core