As Intel tries to invade ARM’s turf, the dominant processor design in the mobile world is fighting back aggressively, extending its reach into netbooks and embedded devices, enhancing its graphics and software capabilities, and releasing its latest core. And chipmakers are starting to release supercharged ARM-based platforms that will go head-on against Intel Atom in the crossover territory between PCs and mobiles, the latest being Marvell with Armada.
Marvell is going up against the new breed of gigahertz app processors with Armada, which will target slots in superphones and smartbooks, competing with Qualcomm Snapdragon, TI OMAP, Nvidia Tegra and Samsung Hummingbird. Having acquired Intel’s ARM-based XScale business, the US-based firm has not gained a high profile in cellphones yet, except in outside positions like Wi-Fi. But it has been raising its game in two directions ‘ one, pursuing an ultra-low cost architecture that appeals to the operators’ desire for unified reference platforms, namely China Mobile’s oPhone; and two, going for the MID space with the new Armada.
This family of processors tops out at 1.2GHz frequency. Marvell is claiming over 50 design wins already, all unnamed, and reminding us that it ships one billion chips a year, two-thirds of them based on ARM, making it the biggest beast in the ARM space. “The Armada family delivers to mobile devices what skeptics once doubted could be done – fast, PC-caliber processing, full internet experience, rich media including HD quality video and 3D graphics – all in lightweight form factors with long battery life,” said co-founder Weili Dai, also general manager of the firm’s consumer and computing business unit. “There will always be a place for PCs, but the future of mobile computing – for smartbooks, e-readers, smart tablets and more – will by necessity get its DNA from smartphones, not PCs,” she added.
This is the type of fighting talk we are getting accustomed to from the ARM community as it battens down the hatches against Atom’s onslaught. ARM’s annual technical conference in Silicon Valley this week was full of it, plus a new core for the UK firm’s high end line of mobile and embedded processors. The A5, codenamed Sparrow, is a new entry level member of the Cortex family and positioned as an upgrade for today’s ARM926EJ-S and ARM11 cores. This unifies that diverse set of products under one software compatible umbrella, says EETimes, just in time to meet the challenge from the first 32nm version of Atom, due to sample in a year’s time, targeting smartphones.
Cellphones now have an average of 2.5 ARM processors apiece, says the vendor, and it claims the Cortex A5 comes in well below the power consumption of any Atom chip. It’s a higher performance option than ARM’s M series, which goes into another growth market, microcontrollers for embedded systems. A cutdown version of the A8 and A9, it will run at about 500MHz and burn about 0.12mW per MHz. This could result in 20% more performance than an ARM11 at 65% of its size, and 80% more than an ARM9 in a a similar size, says the firm. The A5 can also use ARM’s Mcore technology to be implemented in a quad-core processor, which would boost it to 1GHz.
Despite its progress, ARM has certainly not been untouched by recession. The UK firm suffered a year-on-year revenue decline of 8% in its third quarter, down to $123 million, while operating margin declined from 20.3% to 9.6% and pre-tax profit was about halved from $25.8 million to $12.6 million. (Adjusted by a number of factors such as restructuring charges and acquisitions, profit was actually down only 2% to $39.75 million).
CEO Warren East stood firm by his forecasts for the whole year as market confidence returns. He said revenues for the full year will be “at least” in line with current expectations. The company sold 28 processor licenses in Q3, with non-mobile devices being a major driver – 15 of the new licenses were signed for applications such as automotive, digital TV, networking, storage and microcontrollers.