ARM promises new processors and better 2010 results

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ARM promises new processors and better 2010 results

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 3 February, 2010

READ MORE: Financial | UK | ARM | Semiconductor

As ARM gears up for the assault from Intel on its mobile processor stronghold, it reported falling revenues and profits, but outlined an aggressive roadmap for its Cortex range of processor cores.

The UK-based firm, whose processor designs underpin the chipsets in well over 90% of phones, will launch three new Cortex variants this year. These are codenamed Eagle, Heron and Merlin, and CEO Warren East says they all have lead licensing customers lined up already. Delivery of the IPR will start later this year or early in 2011, but they will not turn up in designs until mid-2011 or later.

Eagle is targeted at high performance devices, sitting in the Cortex-A range for apps processors. This is the area where ARM is under most pressure from Intel Atom - the battle between ARM and x86 is still, to a large extent, one of power efficiency versus heavyweight processing.

Heron is at the opposite end of the scale, positioned for embedded and real time devices, an area where ARM has been expanding during the past couple of years with its Cortex-R real time line. Atom is also seeking an enhanced place in this segment and Intel is working with Taiwanese foundry TSMC on an ultra-low power iteration for embedded markets. Uses for Heron would include basebands and hard disk drive control.

Finally, Merlin fits into the Cortex-M product group, which goes even more deeply into embedded applications, being designed for microcontrollers. The simplified, cost sensitive design uses only one instruction set, Thumb-2, while the 'A' and 'R' ranges also run ARM and Thumb instruction sets. ARM has only 5% of the microcontroller market, where companies like Freescale are strong, in applications such as motor and industrial control.

Beyond the progress report, East would not reveal further product details but said ARM was "within about 18 months of finishing the designs". The embedded options do not appear to be positioned as direct replacements or upgrades for the current products, but will be offered in parallel for "some time to come". As EETimes reports, they will provide "different rather than better performance and attributes to the established Cortex processor cores".

This is true of Eagle too, but this will provide a clear step forward in performance terms, overtaking the current high end, Cortex-A9, and targeting "the very high end", according to East, who added: "Eagle takes us onto yet another level in terms of performance." It will support ARM's attempt to move beyond mobile devices into Intel's heartland, netbooks, plus digital TVs and communications infrastructure. Cortex-A9 recently appeared in Nvidia's Tegra-2 and Marvell's prototype four-core implementation.

The processor roadmap emerged as ARM discussed its fourth quarter results. These felt the effects of last year's downturn, though the firm said it would see better conditions in 2010. Revenue fell 6% year-on-year in the quarter to $140m, while pre-tax profit was down 3% to £32.3m ($51.5m). For the full year dollar revenue was $489.5m, down 10% on 2008. However, ARM reports its licensing revenue a quarter in arrears. For the year, pre-tax profit was down 4% to £96.8m ($154m).

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