LG commits to ARM technology for consumer devices
In yet another major coup for ARM, the South Korean Electronics giant LG announced that it has signed a new licensing agreement that allows them access to ARM’s high performance Cortex-A series processors and Mali GPUs. This includes the now popular Cortex-A9 processor as well as the upcoming Cortex-A15 processor and Mali-T604 GPU.
LG has been an ARM licensee since 1995, but this new level of commitment will see LG use its technology across a far wider range of devices such as STB’s, TV’s as well as smartphones and tablets.
This is great news for ARM and consumers. It shows how ARM technology is now ubiquitous in high-performance and low-power devices. Back in 2009, Intel proudly announced LG as a smartphone partner before the product was shelved. Then came the Nokia partnership which again crumbled to dust when they announced their partnership with Microsoft to use Windows Phone 7 as the basis for all future phones.
We see the adoption of ARM technology by a wide range of companies as a way of ensuring innovation. We shouldn’t have to rely on one company for improvements. The ARM business model may not be a multi-billion dollar money-maker (for ARM), but it helps companies produce cost-effective products that allows them to innovate using their own patents and ideas.
I don’t think Intel will be able to match ARM on performance per milliwatt – there’s simply too much extra silicon (an Atom A520 CPU is four times the size of a Tegra 2 SOC, which includes a dual core ARM), but even if Intel does match on performance and size, there’s still price to consider. After that, there’s just that minor problem of inertia. Maybe Intel can make a little headway in the tablet market, but the phone market is ARM.
On the other hand, the ARM business model has allowed Qualcomm to announce the new ‘krait’ CPU core at MWC in February, (but reported as ‘leaked’ by Slashgear and Engadget next to their LG articles. Qualcomm claims such similar performance to the Cortex A15 that Engadget is convinced it’s an A15 chip. The difference is, Qualcomm’s offering will be available earlier.
Now that leaves us with a very interesting situation. We have three diverse ARM architectures, from ARM, Qualcomm and Marvell, all based on ARM V7. This is similar to the situation with x86 about 10 years ago when Intel, AMD and Via had different x86 processors. In the end, Intel implemented AMD’s innovations, and we may see a similar result here.
Speaking of AMD, have you seen this?http://armdevices.net/2011/04/27/how-soon-will-amd-start-to-make-arm-processors/
And it’s not even April 1st!
Les
April 27, 2011 at 7:27 pm