ARM and Globalfoundries partner up for 28nm Cortex-A9 SOCs, invite great expectations
By Vlad Savov 
posted February 24th 2010 7:43AM
posted February 24th 2010 7:43AM
posted February 24th 2010 7:43AM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
I can has flash hardware acceleration now?
@fatjoe You mean that video player that doesn't even have a fullscreen feature?
@fatjoe
Flash is indeed evil. Have you considered that javascript is also evil? Read the list of security updates for every web browser out there. The vast majority of security problems are due to javascript.
@Schmich .. stop spreading lies. Firefox 3.6 and the WebKit nightlies have supported HTML5 fullscreen for weeks now.
@taligent
He was talking about QuickTime. Calm down.
This advancement sounds pretty decent.
Imagine a Tegra2 clocked at 2Ghz. Power consumption would stay about the same but performance would almost double.
It seems to me that, production technology wise, this puts ARM Cortex A9 based products in the same leage as Intel's more advanced processors. I believe current Atoms are produced on 45nm. Would be nice to know when Intel plans to move Atom production to its 32nm process.
Looks like Intel will need to do some catching-up soon in the ultra-low power segment.
I hope Nvidia starts migrating Tegra2 to this production technology as soon as possible.
@sola
Time will tell if nvidia could swallow their pride and make a deal with Global Foundries.
Though this changes the field for ARM9, and makes it a very attractive option (due to the increase in battery life).
@sola,
yeah, while Globalfoundries is founded by AMD.
@sola
nvidia with tegra 2 is not the only company that makes ARM processors. There are at least half a dozen others that also produce them.
Am I the only one who thinks that developing non-x86 processors for future portable devices is pointless?
@max3000
Yes you're the only one who thinks that.
A very large percent of mp3 players, media players, and small tablets are actually using ARM. One advantage of ARM has always been its battery consumption.
@max3000
How do you figure? In the mobile world there is only one game in town. Intel are trying to get in with Moorestown. It will be a long time before they catch up to ARM.
@max3000
Do you actually follow the spec sheets for the portable devices that are released? Almost every big smartphone, tablet, portable game device has and will have a chip based on an ARM design.
@max3000
arm or arm-like architectures are the future in mobile computing. We'll see more and more of them, even in netbooks and some notebook.
This is because people want battery life, rather than horsepower.
@max3000
Obviously a x86 CPU for a smarphone should be power efficient. That's what I mean, intel/arm/amd/whatever should start developing one that has low power consumption for pocketable mobile devices.
Do you people even realize how much of an advantage an x86 CPU has? Theoretically you could just install win7 on it if you don't like your OS. Think about the app devs. Much easier to work with and more powerful.
Disclaimer: I have an N900 which is a Cortex A8 device and I'm enjoying it greatly :)
@max3000
x86 will NEVER be efficient. It has a shitload of legacy instruction, that has to be kept for compatibility, which translate in a overhead of circuitry, and thus power dissipation.
Plus x86 architecture is not thought for the modern paradigm of informatics. We need a radical new platform, and arm is a step in the right direction.
@mascarpone Hmm, I see your point. Never looked at it this way. Wonder how long it'll take ARM to reach the desktop or maybe even the gamer market (for consoles and PCs).
@max3000
i agree with you. I have some experience with ARM, ARM was developed a decade ago, it was developed to runs nice with less resources.
While ARM is power efficient but lacks on functionalities, for example Floating Point Operation are allowed in specific cpu that use ARM, while Intel support it since the era of the x87 and almost every single x86 cpu support floating point operation since the era of the first pentium.
Since developers don't known if the targer cpu will support or not floating point operation then, they decided to do several tricks that are efficient for non-fpo cpu but inefficient for fpo-cpu.
For example :to divide a simple number must be avoided, so most program uses hash tables (a table with resultants).
@max3000
why on earth would arm be trying to get to the gaming desktop??? Are you high or something? This is a platform for mobile computing, which is there to save battery. It makes no sense at all to try and put it in a desktop running off the mains.
Now we just need RIM to stop using the MSM7600 and make a Berry with this processor.
Wow, can we expect this in Windows Phone 7? It would be great to have a really speedy processor for the phone and greater battery life to boot. I doubt they will boost up the core speed initially. Just because A9 is ready with 28nm does not mean that other advanced ARM devices are ready to hit the process with full production capability. Every chip has to go through a period of ironing out the bugs. Yields almost always increase with time spent.
@arnavdesai Er, yes? And in iPhone OS, and in Android, and in Symbian ^whatever, and in Maemo or whatever that's called now, and in WebOS if Palm manage to stick around long enough...
Cortex A9 will certainly be powering the next generation of phones just as Cortex A8 powers the current high-end; and battery-saving innovations like the usage of 28nm processes are exactly what it takes to put these higher-end processors onto smaller devices.
Basically I am not criticising it at all but in the overall scheme of things from a consumer's point of view this is really a non-news post along the lines of 'Moore's law continues' - in other words, next year's phones will be faster than this year's. Achieving that requires frequent technical advances, like this one, but none of them are really step changes; it's just pieces of the hard work that goes into making things get continuously better.
Nowadays we expect things to get better (well, at least in terms of faster processors...) so this won't achieve anything particularly shocking. If there weren't advances like this one, you'd be far more surprised because next year's phones would be no faster/more capable than this year's.
Enough of the news already, when are we actually going to see one of these in a netbook in a store?
I guess spinning off manufacturing from AMD was a smart move.
Who ever would have thought in the 80s back when I was in school using crappy Acorn/BBC computers that Acorn would evolve into ARM and power all our phones, nice to see a bit of British know how back in the tech race.
Now this is what I've been saying about batteries. The correct way to work around the current state of battery technology isn't to whine about battery technology not growing faster; it's to make your electronics better. Duh. Whiners...
This looks very promising. With performance like this, maybe in the future there will be ARM based laptops competing against Intel ULV based laptops. Of course there are a lot of people who don't want to buy a laptop without Windows.
Nowadays we expect things to get better (well, at least in terms of faster processors...) so this won't achieve anything particularly partner shocking. If there weren't advances like this one, you'd be far more surprised because next year's phones would be no faster/more capable than this year's.