We truly are moving towards making our compact mobile devices as powerful as our computers. After the quad-core SoC unveiled by Nvidia yesterday, ARM has announced an equally competent graphics processing unit (GPU) for high-end smartphones, tablets and TVs. The Mali-T658 takes advantage of ARM’s system-level approach to multicore design that delivers performance as well as energy-efficiency. Mali-T658 is in fact 10 times improved than Mali-400 MP – which for the record is being used in Galaxy S II.

The Mali-T658 boasts eight cores and is designed to work flawlessly with ARM Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7 processors. ARM is also claiming that the GPU is optimized for big.LITTLE processing mode due to the “autonomous nature of the Mali Job Manager.”

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LG had expressed its intention to develop processor for mobile devices in the past and they’ve taken the first step towards it by licensing processor technology from ARM. LG seems to have taken inspiration from its Korean counterpart, Samsung who also develops processors for their high-end devices.

Anyways, under the agreement, LG Electronics will get access to ARM’s Cortex processor and ARM Mali GPU range which also includes Cortex-A15 MPCore, Cortex-A9 MPCore processors, ARM Mali-T604 GPU and ARM CoreLink.

LG plans to use these processors in mobile phones, tablets, set top boxes, digital TV etc.

Press Release

Well Microsoft didn’t really show any devices as speculated but Steve Ballmer in his pre-CES keynote confirmed that the next version of Windows will support the ARM architecture. This will make the world’s widely used operating system compatible with the world’s widely used architecture, which is used in mobile phones, tablets etc.

Microsoft also gave a brief demo showing off the Windows 8 (with fake Windows 7 UI) running fluently on Intel’s SoC, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon and Nvidia’s Tegra 2 platform.

One thing that has kept Microsoft out of the tablet race is the uptake of its operating system. In order to give a full PC experience, manufacturers were forced to adopt Intel or AMD CPUs for their devices but compromise on the device’s battery life, which is a big factor while considering a tablet.

Thankfully, this is going to change soon as Microsoft is rumored to unveil its Windows OS compatible with ARM architecture. Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal are reporting that Microsoft has planned to show off the new Windows that will support ARM at the CES next month during Steve Ballmer’s keynote.

This is huge for Microsoft when you consider ARM’s architecture being used in most mobile devices and will allow Microsoft to penetrate the market ruled by the iOS, Android and the likes.

ARM has achieved a great breakthrough in the mobile devices processor market with the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor. The new CPU gives 5x better performance as compared to ARM’s previous Cortex-A8 processors and has the capability to be clocked at 2.5GHz. ARM is making this processor available for licensing to OEMs and has confirmed to manufacture in 32nm and 28nm.

Additionally, the Cortex-A15 is backward compatible that supports previous Cortex-A processors, enabling instant access to developers to make their products work on a new powerful processor.

ARM’s Cortex-A15 will be seen in smartphones, tablets, TVs, web servers and wireless infrastructure in the near future.

Product Page

Microsoft today announced that they’ve entered into a new licensing agreement with ARM. Although complete details of the agreement are confidential, Microsoft did confirm that they’ll get closer access to ARM’s IP that will help them to make better devices based-on ARM platform.

Microsoft and ARM are partners since 1997 where they’ve worked together on software and devices across the embedded, consumer and mobile spaces.

“With this architecture license, Microsoft will be at the forefront of applying and working with ARM technology in concert with a broad range of businesses addressing multiple application areas,” said Mike Muller, CTO ARM.

It’s no surprise that Dell’s recent leaks show Android playing a pivotal role. However, their association with the OS might expand to smartbooks too. A roadmap slide uncovered by guys at Androidcentral shows that couple of ARM powered smartbooks are destined for some time later this year or early 2011. The smartbooks are named as Sparta, which will be a netbook tablet and Athens that will act as a ‘true netbook’ and weigh less than a kilogram. Other than that, both the smartbooks will feature the same 11-inch SVGA display and will have optional connectivity options like 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

[Via Androidcentral]

A 2009 document highlighting Samsung’s ARM processor plans has been leaked. Although Samsung has ARM chips integrated in the phones, it’s the netbook market Samsung is more interested in. According to the document, Samsung is bullish on ARM-based netbook solutions with Linux OS instead of the current combination of Intel and Windows. In fact, Samsung deems their ARM-based chips and Linux OS like Chrome OS, Android and even Ubuntu can make a good combo.

Moving to the chip offerings, Samsung has planned a number of application processors (AP) that goes up to quad-core.

2010/2011:
Orion is based-on Cortex-A9 dual-core processor and has a clock speed of 800MHz. It will enjoy effortless migration of software and hardware from Samsung’s S5PV210 chip. It will be sampling in Q3 2010 and mass production is expected in Q1 2011.

Hercules is based-on Cortex-A9 dual-core processor and has a clock speed of 1GHz. It will be sampling in Q3 2011 and mass production is expected in Q1 2012.

Pegasus is based-on Cortex-A9 single-core processor and has a clock speed of 1GHz. It will be sampling in Q2 2011 and mass production is expected in Q4 2012.

Mercury is based-on Cortex-A5 (Sparrow) single-core processor and has a clock speed of 600MHz.

2012/2013:
Draco is based-on Cortex-A9 dual-core processor and has a clock speed of 1.2GHz.

Venus is based-on Cortex-A5 (Sparrow) dual-core processor and has a clock speed of 600GHz.

Finally, the Aquila is based-on Cortex-A9 (Eagle) quad-core processor and has a clock speed of 1.2GHz.

The main reason for them to go with ARM is to give a full-browsing platform with an all-day use battery and bring down the cost. The document referred to bring down the BOM cost to around $99.

Note: This post has been republished from Samsung Hub. For more Samsung news, head over to Samsung Hub.

We had expected a flurry of tablet PCs since the announcement of iPad but this is a huge figure. An ARM executive recently said that there could be more than 50 iPad-like products worldwide. ARM who makes chips for these devices also confirmed that consumers will see a few tablets from mobile carriers in Q2 but there will be much more in the following quarter.

The executive also said that there will be number of tablet options for Chinese consumers but big companies as well as top 10 cellular operators will also look out to tap other markets as well.

The biggest upcoming trade show related to tech is Computex and it’s the place where we’ll see most companies’ tablet creations. ARM even rented additional booth space to show products powered by their chips.

[Via ComputerWorld]

ARM-based chips are mostly used in consumer electronic devices that demand less processing power but today’s introduction of a dual-core Cortex-A9 processor is set to change that. ARM has unveiled the new processor that clocks 2GHz of speed while consuming only 1.9 watts of power. According to tests done by ARM, the new processor expectedly, beats Intel’s single-core N270 clocked at 1.6GHz.

However, despite the processing power, ARM loses out on software front. The highest selling Windows OS supports only x86 and x64 architectures leaving the ARM architecture to support Linux and only Windows CE.

The first devices powered by the Cortex-A9 chip are expected in the first half of next year from its 15 partners including Toshiba, Nvidia and Samsung.

[Via PCWorld]