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Smartphones enter the gigahertz age

October 19, 2009 8:59pm
by Chris Nuttall

An ARM race is beginning to take shape in smartphones, as the latest models demand faster processors to deal with an expanding range of computing and multimedia activities on devices.

Marvell announced today it would overtake Qualcomm’s 1GHz  Snapdragon processor with a new family of Armada processors, based on ARM of the UK’s designs, capable of speeds up to 1.2Ghz.

That is twice the clock speed of the 600Mhz iPhone 3GS and the new Motorola Droid, reported to contain a 600Mhz Texas Instruments processor.

Marvell says more than 50 devices have already been designed by customers for the new chips. The 1Ghz Armada 600 will be aimed specifically at smart phones, while a 1.2Ghz Armada 1000 targets Blu-ray players and set-top boxes. Other versions will cater for netbooks, e-readers and digital photo frames.

Qualcomm is making samples of its second-generation Snapdragon, running at 1.3GHz, at the end of this year, with a dual-core 1.5GHz version coming after that.

Handset makers have been piling on features to try to outdo the capabilities of the iPhone and there have been big investments in phones for Google’s Android platform.

In processors, the iPhone is now outgunned on Android by the Samsung Moment, announced earlier this month, with its 800MHz processor, and the 1GHz Snapdragon processor in the Acer Liquid (pictured), announced last week.

The first smartphone with a gigahertz processor was the Toshiba TG01, which runs the Windows Mobile operating system.

“Our customers want differentiation and consumers want features, and the easiest way to add features is to make devices with more and more powerful processors,” Sehat Sutardja, Marvell chief executive, told me.

“So today we have 1.2GHz, next year we will have 2GHz processors.”

Marvell bought Intel’s XScale mobile phone business in 2006 and has continued to sell its processors, based on the x86 architecture used in PC microprocessors, for BlackBerry devices.

However, Mr Sutardja said he approved a top-secret project eight years ago to develop processors with ARM instruction sets and Armada is the result.

Armada also takes the best of XScale in its video acceleration capabilities and efficiency at running Adobe’s Flash technology.

The company says Armada will run full 1080P HD video and span a range of devices from the low-cost embedded market to high-end smart phones and Blu-ray players.

That means Marvell will join other chipmakers, such as Qualcomm, Freescale and Nvidia, in challenging Intel as it expands into consumer electronics, smartphones, netbooks and the embedded market with its Atom family of processors.

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October 19, 2009 8:59pm in Hardware, Mobile | Comment

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