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ARM unveils 'Osprey' A9 core, to take on Atom
By siliconindia
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Thursday, 17 September 2009, 20:43 IST |
2 Comments
Bangalore: ARM Holdings, a processor intellectual property (IP) licensor has developed two implementations of a dual-core Cortex A9 processor design called Osprey, which is touted to be an 'Atom-beater'. The design would appear to be similar to an OMAP-4 chip that Texas Instruments is expected to sample soon, which puts two ARM Cortex A9 cores in the space of a single Intel Atom core, reports EE Times.
The 40-nm (nanometer) hard-macro processor, capable of achieving 2-GHz clock frequency, is one of the highest performing cores developed by ARM. The Osprey comes in the form of hard macros designed for manufacture using the 40G 40-nm manufacturing process technology from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).
The hard macro has been optimized once for power consumption and once for performance and in the later case should take the ARM processor into newer spheres in terms of competing for performance applications. "We are into unlocking some new markets; netbooks, smartbooks, consumer electronics in entertainment devices and enterprise networking, such as printers," said Eric Schorn, Vice President of Marketing for ARM's Processor Division.
Although ARM is still waiting to put a full test chip through TSMC, which is set to happen in the fourth quarter, the two designs are already available for licensing today. This will allow customers to produce their own SoCs (system-on-chip) in 2010. The core occupies 6.7 square millimeters of silicon die and at 2-GHz the core delivers 10,000 Dhrystone MIPS while consuming about 1.9 watts.
