ARM planning three new Cortex CPUs, Eagle headed for smartphones

As if the Cortex-A9 isn't stirring up enough emotion all by itself, ARM revealed the roadmap for an even faster iteration of its Cortex-A series of chips during its earnings call a few days ago. Codenamed Eagle, the new processor is slated for a production run of 3 billion units annually, but alas this slide shares no more information on it beyond the intended market of smartphones, mobile computing, and digital TV products. (We've definitely heard that it'll be a 28nm multi-core part destined to ship around 2012, however.) There's also word of a pair of embedded chips, dubbed Heron and Merlin, which will find roles to perform in automotive and audio processing environments. Unsurprising that ARM isn't standing still, but we could've done with a little less mystery and a few more specs.

[Thanks, Kamal]

[xbit Posted Feb 5th 2010 6:51AM]

I (heart) ARM.

[ewlung Posted Feb 5th 2010 7:08AM]

If it is powerful ... why I cannot find mobile phone using it?

All I found were Snapdragon ... or soon Tegra ...

I might be wrong, but ...

[Ioannis Posted Feb 5th 2010 7:21AM]

@ewlung Using what? The not yet released Eagle? Or ARM CPUs in general? If the latter, then you should know that both of the platforms you mentioned use ARM processors...

[GGG Posted Feb 5th 2010 7:41AM]

@ewlung

Actually almost every single mobile phone out there uses some kind of ARM processor

[Ganondolf Posted Feb 5th 2010 7:13AM]

arm must make tons of money, arm cpu's are in everything

[appleipad Posted Feb 5th 2010 7:33AM]

@Ganondolf yes even the A4 is ARM

[BUNT2 Posted Feb 5th 2010 7:25AM]

I guess we know what the Apple G5 processor will be....

[BUNT2 Posted Feb 5th 2010 9:26AM]

@BUNT2

Sorry, mega fail there bros! I mean the A5.

[bugbot42 Posted Feb 5th 2010 7:39AM]

Why does it so long to get an ARM CPU to mass market? Cortex-A9 is just starting to be used in commercial products such as the iPad, and already ARM's releasing another CPU, which will immediately make all the brand-new A9 devices outdated. At least A9 is pretty darn powerful....

[BUNT2 Posted Feb 5th 2010 7:59AM]

@bugbot42
Intel has roadmaps too. I don't see your point?

[chritto Posted Feb 5th 2010 8:08AM]

It is an interesting point though. Chips do take a long time to come to market, especially when ARM creates the architecture, but not the chips themselves - that's for other companies like TI, Samsung, Qualcomm, etc to implement. For example, the Cortex A8 came about in about '05, and the Snapdragon in '07.

Regardless, it's exciting that better products are always in the pipeline!

[Temple Posted Feb 5th 2010 8:25AM]

We can attribute ARM's ascendancy thanks to devices like the iPhone, iPad, etc. We have to expect once the Chrome OS is finally released ARM will get an even larger foot holding. Not to mention future 3G/4G always-on devices (ebook readers, etc).

Its good news either way, ARM is a more democratic way of making chips compared to the old x86 Wintel model.

[UberAdept Posted Feb 5th 2010 8:45AM]

anyone know what the numbers signify? 33 (+16) etc

[cosmicinglewood Posted Feb 5th 2010 8:14PM]

Nice, performance per watt on current arm's is hard to touch by anything in the silly X86 bin.... so this is good news for our increasingly "mobile" electronics ..... I just hope they keep on with the SOC idea, mixing a GPU with the CPU"s, cache and ram memory on the same die of silicon. Word ARM ^^ peace to the British people at this company!