The famous handheld device chipmakers, ARM, are looking to make their mark as mainstream chipmakers. They are one of the mainstays of the handheld market because of their amazing power efficiency. ARM Holdings is a company based in Cambridge, England who license out their chip designs so that other companies can build chips that suit their own requirements based on those designs. Apple for example, after acquiring PA Semi, set the star engineers of the company to make ARM chips for the iPhone.
After seeing a lot of success in the handheld devices market, ARM is now looking to replicate that success in the mainstream market. They announced on Wednesday that they have designs for Cortex A9 processors that cover dual-core, quad-core and eight-core architectures. These chips are currently under development. If you haven’t guessed it already – this market is served primarily by Intel’s x86 architecture processors.
According to Eric Schorn (VP Marketing, ARM Processor Division), this move is completely different from anything they have done so far. He has directly said while talking to ZDNet UK that the company is heading in the same direction as Intel’s mainstream processors and will “intercept Intel in a high-margin area (and) not just with Atom”. If anyone had any doubts whatsoever about what ARM intends to do with these processors, there’s your conclusive answer.
Schorn also said that the customers primarily look for dual-core processors and the high-end market is going for quad-core. All the while, people are setting up for eight-cores and ARM is headed that way as well. They are conforming to the market demand for more cores.
Running up to 2GHz, the new chip designs are available in two variants and are as usual intended for companies who (intend to) build their own chips. One is the power-saving variety that are supposed to be eight times as power efficient as Intel’s low power options (based on performance-per-watt). The high performance chips are pegged to have five times as much throughput as Intel’s Atom chips at similar power levels.
As per the company-published benchmarks, the low-power segment basically delivers twice the performance for a quarter of the power. Now that’s what I call efficiency.
This reminds me of the time when two of Intel’s high ranking executives bad-mouthed ARM. That was a case of sour grapes though because they were criticizing Apple’s decision to go with ARM instead of Intel for the iPhone. Intel later had to issue an apology that also mentioned that Intel has a long way to go before it catches up with ARM’s power efficiency levels. The executives almost sounded drunk when they were saying how weak the ARM processors are.
Up until now, ARM has been working mainly with small devices like those used within automobiles, wireless devices, handheld devices, etc. Now with these newer components, we will likely see some enterprise action hitting ARM. The high-performance market is currently dominated by design teams that are closed and proprietary. These new designs can be implemented by the companies themselves, making them far more lucrative than the existing products. In addition to the freedom gained by the likes of Apple, it is likely that the power efficiency will be far better than existing solutions.
Schorn is of the same opinion. He said that enterprise is a key opportunity for the company and that the company’s existing partners are doing well in the markets. By which he probably means to say that the same success will (hopefully) rub off on the high-performance venture. It will be good to see better chips in the market, so good luck to ARM.
