ARM promises dual-core Cortex A9-based smartphones next year

by Chris Ziegler posted Jun 16th 2009 at 4:31AM

The world's two most visually engaging smartphones -- the iPhone and the Pre -- share very similar cores based on ARM's Cortex A8 architecture, and with the newer, more advanced Cortex A9 in the pipeline, you can't help but let your mind wander a bit as you envision what twice as much computational power could bring to a handset. The A9 employs more advanced instruction pipelining than its predecessor, but the biggest news has to be the fact that it can pack two or more cores -- and ARM fully expects dual-core A9-based phones to hit in 2010. Of course, power consumption is the biggest constraint when it comes to this category of device, and while the company says that peak drain will exceed that on today's crop of devices, average consumption will actually drop thanks largely to a move from 65nm to 45nm manufacturing processes. Add in 1080p video promised by TI's next-gen OMAP4 silicon wrapped around an A9 core, and you've basically got a home theater in your pocket that's ready to rock for a few hours on a charge. That and Snoop Dogg, of course.

Filed under: Misc

Tags: apple, arm, core, cortex, cortex a9, CortexA9, dual core, DualCore, iphone, multi core, MultiCore, palm, pre, processor

Subscribe to these comments

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

JA @ Jun 16th 2009 5:40AM

That is all nice PR, but from chip people i met, screens are by far the biggest battery drains today. any improvement in CPU is welcome but compared to screen consupmtion its marginal.

Neutral

engorged @ Jun 16th 2009 5:40AM

all the more reason for me to feel good not wanting to buy the iPhone 3GS or the Pre... next year;s versions will do! =)

Neutral

Matt G @ Jun 16th 2009 6:39AM

More CPU power means more potential for high def media, more media types, more complex apps and of course better gaming... coupled with higher efficiency OLED screens coming out... 2010 is going to be exciting. That's probably when my G1 will get replaced.

Neutral

PEZ @ Jun 16th 2009 7:30AM

I want to see this up against Snapdragon.

Highly Ranked

Lol @ Jun 16th 2009 7:45AM

lol @ SCU
XD

Neutral

dansch @ Jun 16th 2009 9:31AM

on a side note: i don't think the iphone runs on a cortex a8. All still arm 11.
Dansch

Neutral

Vincent @ Jun 16th 2009 6:21PM

Both the new iphone 3gs and the pré run on cortex a8 solutions. With a separated / dedicated 3d chipset. Unlike tegra which is a soc, hence more energy economy.

Neutral

NuShrike @ Jun 27th 2009 1:58PM

The Imagination PowerVR SGX is integrated part of the SoC, available NOW, and the entire respective OS architectures (mOSX, WebOS) is designed for it 100% -- no driver problems like WM.

NOW is much better than continue to hold your breath masturbating over the specs of the next over-the-horizon magical Qualcomm chip that will still disappoint because the OS sucks on it.

Neutral

Vincent @ Jun 16th 2009 6:17PM

Does anyone have polygons and texel rate per second numbers to compare tegra, snapdragon and cortex a8 based solutions ?

nvidia tegra youtube videos show that tegra accelerates even the browser and fonts display. Even though it is based on an old arm11.

/me thinks android + tegra + 4in amoled screen FTW ! :)

Neutral

Simone Cicero @ Jun 18th 2009 9:06AM

Guys,
look at: http://blog.symbian.org/2009/06/04/silicon-heaven/

"The environment consists of an ST-Ericsson U8500 smart phone platform embedding the first silicon implementation of ARM® Cortex™-A9 MPCore in the industry."

I always thought that Symbian was going to invest strong on MPCores.

Let's see.

http://meedabyte.wordpress.com