ARM Launches Cortex-A5 Processor, To Take On Atom

bigwophh writes "ARM launched its new Cortex-A5 processor (codenamed Sparrow) this week, and while it's not targeted at the top end of the mobile market, it is a significant launch nonetheless. The Cortex-A5, which will likely battle future iterations of Intel's Atom for market share, is an important step forward for ARM for several reasons. First, it's significantly more efficient to build than the company's older ARM1176JZ(F)-S, while simultaneously outperforming the ARM926EJ-S. The Cortex-A5, however, is more than just a faster ARM processor. Architecturally, it's identical to the more advanced Cortex-A9, and it supports the same features as that part as well. This flexibility is designed to give product developers and manufacturers access to a fully backwards-compatible processor with better thermal and performance characteristics than the previous generation."

Comments

I do not think Exponentially means what you think

[Kupfernigk]

"Exponentially" means according to a function in which one of the terms is a constant raised to a term which includes the power of the x variable. It is not a synonym for "many times", and it cannot apply to something which is, even instantaneously, a constant, since it can only refer to a function. If you mean that the number of MIPS/Linux applications increases linearly while that of X86 functions is increasing exponentially you might have a point - except that, at any moment in time without more information, this would not tell you which function was largest or had the largest gradient.

You have to expect pedantry, this is Slashdot.