ARM fleshes out processor roadmap and delivers solid results

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ARM fleshes out processor roadmap and delivers solid results

ARM Holdings, whose core designs underpin 90%-plus of mobile processors, has presented its annual roadmap along with solid financial results

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 2 February, 2011

ARM Holdings, whose core designs underpin 90%-plus of mobile processors, has presented its annual roadmap along with solid financial results. New designs for 2011 are focused on smaller phones and embedded devices, in contrast to last year’s announcement of the high end Eagle core, which aims to take ARM into powerful new device form factors and even into servers.

The new additions include Kingfisher, for processors targeting featurephones, affordable smartphones and cost effective digital TV kit; and Cygnet, an addition to the Cortex-M family of cores for microcontrollers. Kingfisher provides a low end for the Cortex-A range of apps processors.

ARM has also extended its Cortex-R family for real time applications. The new Cortex-R5 MPCore and Cortex-R7 MPCore processors are targeted at 3G and 4G mobile devices, as well as mass storage, automotive and industrial markets. The primary focus is on 3G and 4G, and the UK firm says the new designs’ real time features are particularly suited to LTE and LTE-Advanced, with their requirement for rapid data transfer.

Both the new processors can be implemented as single or dual cores. However, the Cortex-R7 MPCore processor features specific SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) multicore technology, including new real time enhancements to add to performance scalability and energy efficiency.

Existing and future Cortex R-Series processors are all binary compatible to future-proof ARM-based designs and support a single consistent architecture and software base. In mobile gadgets, the firm said “this will enable developers to transition from current ARM processor-based solutions, which power over 90% of current 3G baseband products, to the Cortex-R5 processor for LTE, and on to the Cortex-R7 processor for future LTE-Advanced designs.”

While Cortex, the newest generation of ARM’s processors, has a huge market advantage, its other main line, the Mali graphics core, has tougher challenges. ARM CEO Warren East said Mali NG would be the next release, to follow the Mali T604, launched in November. He told EETimes that NG would be an extension of the current architecture rather than a major change of direction, but will further increase graphics capability with performance increases of up to five times.

The real IP powerhouse in graphics is Imagination Technologies Group, with its PowerVR cores for mobile devices and auto applications. Imagination’s graphics core shipments are thought to approach 250m chips a year, well ahead of Mali, even though the latter has scored some major deals, including one with Imagination customer Samsung.

Meanwhile, ARM reported healthy results for 2010, with a 29% increase in revenues to $631.3m in dollar terms. In sterling, the UK company’s revenues were £406.6m, up 33% on 2009.

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