ARM Attacks Intel's Netbook Stranglehold

Barence writes "British chip designer ARM is launching an outright attack on Intel with the launch of a 2GHz processor aimed at everything from netbooks to servers. ARM claims the 40nm Cortex A9 MPCore processor represents a shift in strategy for the company, which has until now concentrated on low-power processors for mobile devices. In the consumer market, ARM is pitching the Cortex A9 directly against Intel's Atom, claiming the processor offers five times the power while drawing comparable amounts of energy. 'It's head and shoulders above anything Intel can deliver today,' ARM VP of marketing Eric Schom claims. However, it has one major hurdle to overcome: it doesn't support Windows. 'We've had conversations with Microsoft and you can imagine what they entail,' says Schom."

Comments

What does it support?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

I suppose Ubuntu Linux is just chopped liver.

C'mon people. Wake up! There are tons of operating systems out there. Some are even better than Windows! *gasp*

A compelling Linux on ARM netbook will worry MS

[mikeabbott420]

Linux already made MS drop their price, allwing cheap windows netbooks because of linux. It's not out of the question that a really compelling ARM netbook would scare them into ARM support. I would be surprised if they didn't have something similar to the x86 apple builds in the powerPC era. Of course windows is mainly valuable for its 3rd party software so people who buy these putative ARM/windows machines may be better off with linux anyway.

Re:A compelling Linux on ARM netbook will worry MS

[sunderland56]

A Linux-based netbook won't worry MS if it only does what a MS netbook does. It needs to do more.

For example - they brag that the ARM "offers five times the power while drawing comparable amounts of energy". But, netbooks rarely use all of the processing power they have right now. If the ARM had equal processing power, but five times the battery life, they'd have a compelling product. The current standard of eight hours on a XP-based netbook is barely enough; a netbook that lasted forty hours would be a market breakthrough, and would be compelling enough to get people to switch to Linux.

Re:A compelling Linux on ARM netbook will worry MS

[Microlith]

The current standard of eight hours on a XP-based netbook

Having owned an XP netbook (aspire one) I must say that an eight-hour standard is optimistic beyond belief, and likely only possible if you leave it sitting there. The Atom processor is power hungry and once you start actually using it the battery life plummets considerably.

ARM already has an advantage on power consumption, if they can match the Atom on performance I suspect they'll win on battery life by default.

Re:A compelling Linux on ARM netbook will worry MS

[timeOday]

Whether the ARM chip performance is even adequate for normal netbook applications (e.g. watching youtube) is an open question until somebody tries it. Sure, ARM threw out this number of 5x, which is a meaningless number until we get a better overall idea of how fast and slow it is on different tasks.

Second, even cutting the CPU power consumption to zero wouldn't give you anywhere near 40 hours of battery life in a netbook. The CPU is just one piece of it.

no windows?

[uncreativeslashnick]

This won't end well. I have an ARM device (nokia n810) and it's great. But Wintel monopoly will kill this just like it did Sparc and IBM Power. I'm sure if it's as good as they claim it'll carve out a niche, but it won't directly compete in numbers or presence with intel CPUs.

chip supports OS? Hmmm, backwards...

[kharris312002]

This may be the first time I've ever heard it said that a processor doesn't support an OS... Usually it's the other way around.

Re:But, does it run DOS?

[Dog-Cow]

You are not all that bright. Some might even call you an idiot.

The ARM instruction set is not x86 compatible. End of story.

Re:real solution

[jabjoe]

The iPhone is a ARM processor.....

No Windows? Great! No Microsoft tax!

[MoxFulder]

However, it has one major hurdle to overcome: it doesn't support Windows.

Fuck Windows. Seriously.

I've been unwillingly paying the Microsoft tax for TEN YEARS. All I ever do is wipe Windows and install Linux. If my new computer can't run Windows then... great!! Maybe I won't have to pay the tax.

I'd love a low-power, high-performance ARM notebook. I'd be happy with MIPS or Loongson (Chinese MIPS clone) as well. Debian already has a full-blown ARM port and I'll bet they could get it working on an ARM netbook in a day. Ubuntu would undoubtedly be soon-to-follow.

As a side benefit, having multiple widely-used architectures for desktop systems (x86 and ARM) would be a support nightmare for hardware companies that still keep their drivers proprietary and undocumented. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Broadcom and NVidia. This would just be another nail in the coffin for their obstructionist attitudes towards free/open-source operating systems.

Re:Porting code to a new architecture

[timeOday]

Porting Windows itself is almost irrelevant. The tens of thousands of apps in the Windows ecosystem still wouldn't work.

Re:I will buy one

[flyingfsck]

Get a Touchbook: http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/03/02/touch-book-tablet-netbook-with-arm-cpu-10-hour-battery-detachable-screen/ It is already available and quite cheap.

The best thing about it

[the_womble]

it doesn't support Windows.

That's not a bug, its a feature.

Re:Just for kicks

[TheRaven64]

LEG should make DSPs or GPUs, so SoC manufacturers can include an ARM and a LEG on the same chip.

Re:chip supports OS? Hmmm, backwards...

[Locutus]

in the Windows world, you'll hear that the processor runs on Windows all over the place. They've been trained that Windows is the end all, be all, and center of the universe so the concept of "it runs on Windows" is their world. Talk about a CPU and _it_ runs on Windows is the norm. They really don't know how to think about it without Windows at the center or in a hierarchy of the hardware->OS->applications. They can't imagine a world without Windows. Combine that with software people and marketing people with no clue of hardware and you get "processor X doesn't run on Windows"

LoB