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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."
The Cortex-A5 is aimed at phones. The Cortext-A9 is the one aimed at netbooks. The article referenced in the summary makes this clear.
Its the Wifi/WWAN chips, and LCD screen which suck up the power, not the CPU. ARM is cool and all (pun intended) but if you make an ARM based Dell Mini 9, you're not going to end up with uber battery life, when you're on Wifi and running the screen bright.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Microsoft can really change things around if they decided to port Win7 to ARM, instead of offering only Windows CE.
But considering monopolies, I wouldn't expect that any time soon.
People generally use Windows on PCs because they have x86 Windows software they need to run.
How many people have a stack of ARM software to run on ARM Windows? If you're going to need new software anyway, why would anyone in their right mind pick Windows to run it on?