ARM Unveils Fastest Processor For Mobile Devices
October 4, 2005 1:30 p.m.
By Nic Fildes Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
LONDON (Dow Jones)--ARM Holdings PLC (ARMHY), the U.K. semiconductor technology company, Tuesday unveiled its new ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessor, which will be used to power future generations of high-end mobile phones and improve device battery life.
ARM said the processor is the fastest on the market for low-power mobile and consumer applications and will support applications like multichannel video, audio and gaming. It will also include the technology from its Artisan unit's cell library for the first time.
Bruce Beckloff, ARM's vice president for investor relations, told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview that he doesn't expect a mobile phone using the Cortex-A8 processor to be released until 2008 or 2009. ARM already has five licensees for the core, including Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN), Freescale Semiconductor Inc. (FSL), Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (MC) and Samsung Corp. (000830.SE).
The microprocessor will include technology that enables code compression, secure transactions and digital rights management, as well as technology that specifically supports rich media applications like video.
Beckloff said that the bandwidth going into a mobile phone is increasing at a rapid rate while the applications the device will need to support are also becoming more complex. He said that the Cortex-A8 processor will be roughly twice as fast as the ARM-11 processor which will be used to power new mobile phones being launched in 2006 and 2007.
He said that although the new core is power efficient, battery life will be roughly comparable to current-generation mobile phones mainly because the applications running on the device will use a lot more power. He said the battery would last twice as long using the same applications as a current generation mobile phone.
Beckloff said ARM "expects, over time, very similar licensing patterns to ARM11 and ARM9." He said the ARM11 core, which has been available for around two years, has about 27 licensees, while the ARM9 processor, which has been available for roughly eight years, has around 180 licensees.
ARM's $913 million acquisition of Artisan in 2004 proved controversial, as many analysts were uncertain over the strategic logic of the deal and argued ARM would need to rapidly prove it hadn't overpaid for California-based Artisan by demonstrating its earnings enhancement ability.
ARM traditionally designs microprocessors used predominantly in mobile phones and personal digital assistants, or PDAs, while Artisan operates in the physical intellectual property space, meaning customers can prototype the design of an ARM-based system before entering production of the hardware.
Beckloff said that when ARM acquired Artisan, its strategy was to cross-sell between the two customer bases, exploit Artisan's Internet portal to increase sales and improve its product portfolio. He said: "This is a very early substantiation of that strategy."
Company Web site: arm.com |
