ARM to enter low-cost laptop fray

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 9 May 2008 at 12:08

ARM is ready to throw its hat into the low-cost laptop ring.

ARM makes the processors that power the majority of today's smartphones, however, speaking to PC Pro, Bob Harris, ARM's director of mobile computing says the emergence of low-power laptops such as the Eee PC has opened a new market for the company.

"There's a natural convergence occurring of devices that are moving up, like the iPod - it added a calendar and internet and now it's classed as a mobile internet device. On the other side there's the Asus Eee PC which is going the other way.

"Lots of people have figured it out, they've started asking 'what do we really need' and they're looking at their usage. You'll see us in notebooks real soon."

Intel has already made its first moves on this market with the impending release of the Atom, which has been heavily marketed at the expense of ARM, but Harris has dismissed Intel's performance claims.

"Intel has done the typical thing. It's comparing apples and oranges. It's comparing a 1.6Ghz Atom with a 400Mhz ARM 11, with no L2 cache and saying how much faster the Atom is."

With ARM's latest processor, the Cortex-A8, on the way, the company is claiming comparable performance at a much lower power draw to the Atom - which could prove an attractive incentive to the next generation of low-cost laptop makers.

"We're really good on power, and the wireless side," says Harris. "We also have a lot of partners there who are competing, which breeds innovation and diversity, and that's going to bring down build cost and the costs of materials. I think the sub $200 range is easily obtainable."