arm

Netbooks using ARM's next-generation processor architecture will be announced soon, according to a senior executive at the company.

Rob Coombs, director of mobile solutions at the U.K. processor design company, told ZDNet UK on Wednesday that Cortex-A8- and Cortex-A9-based application processors would find their way not only into smartphones--as with most ARM architecture--but also into small, low-cost subnotebooks.

"In the future, we're going to be in Netbooks," Coombs said. "Expect announcements in the next few months." … Read more

Intel's romance with Apple appears to have gone sour.

Company executives have decided to start including the iPhone as one of their prime examples of smartphones that don't run "the full Internet" because they don't use an Intel chip, according to a report out of the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei from our friends down under at ZDNet Australia. This specious argument--that ARM-based chips aren't man enough to run the Internet--is nothing new from Intel, but the decision to highlight the iPhone as part of that argument is.

Intel has been trying … Read more

The magic of social networking has confirmed that Apple plans to make its own ARM-based processors for future versions of the iPhone.

The New York Times spotted the LinkedIn profile of Wei-han Lien, Apple's senior manager of CPU development, over the weekend. Lien's job description, according to his profile, involves managing the ARM CPU design team for Apple, an extension of his previous work at P.A. Semi.

It's been pretty clear for a while that Apple bought P.A. Semi earlier this year to work on developing its own chips for the iPhone, but as the … Read more

A U.K. company has developed what it calls the smallest snake-arm robot ever, one that is flexible and compliant, like an endoscope, but fully controllable and, like a robot, can be precisely positioned.

The unit will be tested by the U.S. Department of Defense in conducting inspections and work inside confined or cluttered spaces.

When not in use, the robot coils up into a briefcase-size box where it is stowed. This robot has no "elbows," which allows it to "follow its nose" while maneuvering in tight quarters, according to the developer, Bristol-based OC Robotics, … Read more

I was surprised to see that a collection of seven companies - including Mozilla Corp., ARM, and MontaVista - are collaborating on a web-enabled mini-PC. Why surprised?

Because companies have been throwing money at similar ideas for the past decade, and always without success.

When I was at Mitsui Comtek in 1997, we built a similar device. A few years later at Lineo, we worked on something similar (though this time purely from the software angle).

Now MontaVista, a company with which I competed back in my Lineo days, is at it again, but this time hopes that greater openness can be the differentiator:… Read more

A new architectural licensee revealed by mobile-chip designer ARM might just be an old friend.

ARM Chief Executive Warren East revealed on an earnings conference call on Wednesday that "a leading handset OEM," or original equipment manufacturer, has signed an architectural license with the company, forming ARM's most far-reaching license for its processor cores.

East declined to elaborate on ARM's new partner, but EETimes' Peter Clarke could think of only one smartphone maker who would be that interested in shaping and controlling the direction of the silicon inside its phones: Apple.

And at first blush, the … Read more

Apple may have taken a look at the future of mobile chip development and decided to forge its own path.

The New York Times scored an interview with Apple CEO Steve Jobs following Monday's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, and buried inside a rambling exchange about parallel processing and Mac OS X Snow Leopard was this little nugget about PA Semi, the chip company Apple acquired in April. "PA Semi is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods," Jobs told the Times.

System-on-chips, or SOCs, are pretty much what they sound like: complete computer systems on a … Read more

It's been a big week for small systems.

On May 29, VIA formally announced (here) its "Nano" family of low-power x86 processors. These chips will be especially valuable in small laptops, UMPCs, and so-called mobile Internet devices (MIDs).

Then on June 2, NVIDIA announced (here) its Tegra 600 family, which is also being marketed for MIDs. But Tegra is a very different animal. It's based on an ARM11 processor core, which can run Windows Mobile or Linux but not Windows XP or Vista.

VIA's Nano processors are based on a new microarchitecture that is a … Read more

Is Apple really that much of a chip hopper?

If Apple follows through and uses a chip designed by its latest acquisition, PA Semi, in a future product, the company will have made major bets on Power, x86, ARM, and Power again in just this decade. What, no love for SPARC or MIPS?

A PA Semi representative on Wednesday confirmed last night's news that Apple has paid $278 million for the low-power chip designer. Led by prominent chip designer Don Dobberpuhl, the two-and-a-half-year-old company makes chips for embedded devices based on IBM's Power instruction set.

So what might … Read more