Broadcom's latest ARM deal could signal move into netbooks

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Broadcom's latest ARM deal could signal move into netbooks

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 29 September, 2009

READ MORE: Broadcom | ARM | Processor | Semiconductor | Netbook

Is Broadcom about to enter the netbook or MID chip market? The fabless chipmaker has licensed the Cortex-A9 MPCore multicore processor from ARM for use in unspecified mobile and wireless applications - just as ARM is gathering support for its bid to be the de facto processor standard for the emerging smartbook/MID category.

Cortex-A9 is the flagship in ARM's battle to keep Intel Atom out of its mobile heartland, and to try to snatch some of Atom's netbook base for itself and its licensees, which include Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Freescale. Neither ARM nor Broadcom revealed product or financial details of their latest collaboration, but typically this would entail a multmillion dollar licensing fee plus a per-unit royalty.

Broadcom, which already uses ARM designs in various product lines, has been trying to break into the mobile device segment though it has gained limited share so far, despite a breakthrough deal with Nokia for EDGE and for low power 3G. The US company has also licensed ARM's Neon hardware accelerator technology, which is targeted at multimedia, gaming and compute intensive applications.

The Cortex-A9 MPCore processor can run up to four independently configured cores carrying out multiple tasks in parallel and a single processor claims twice the performance of current smartphone processors, while a four-CPU Cortex-A9 cluster can reach 10,000 aggregate DMIPS when clocked at 1GHz.

"The flexibility and scalability of the Cortex-A9 processor enables us to optimize development costs by addressing the requirements of wireless applications from a common core platform," said Nambi Seshadri, CTO of Broadcom's mobile platforms and wireless connectivity division, in a statement.

Last week, ARM showed off a new iteration of A9, codenamed Osprey, a 2GHz design that aims to move up the product food chain into netbooks, routers, high end set-top boxes and gateways.

Products like Osprey are encouraging some analysts to predict victory for ARM in the netbook and smartbook segment in future. For instance, a new report from Robert Castellano of The Information Network forecasts that Intel will have 94% of the netbook market this year, but ARM-based designs will take the lead as early as 2012 as new form factors emerge, with lower prices (under $200) and running Linux or Chrome OS.