Maybe its just something that Intel said but it looks like the Atom vs Cortex (ARM V7) fight is continuing into the next round at MWC. ARM have just send out a press release highlighting that there will be a Cortex-A8 processor vs Intel Atom power comparison on the stand at MWC!
Note that it say’s ‘power’ comparison. Well it’s not exactly hard to demo that one. The best Intel Atom device takes 3-4W. The best Cortex based devices take about 2W under similar usage scenarios. Simple. The problem is, it could take twice as long to do something on a Cortex device. I hope they demo web pages rather than the mostly irrelevant video playback comparison that most companies fall back on. Lets see decoding of a full-screen YouTube SD video in CPU and running 5 tabs of flash-enabled web pages, constantly refreshing!
Other highlights include a Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha release, Cortex A9 demo, Pegatron Netbook.
- first public demonstration of two new technologies working together that will be key to the future of the mobile industry: The ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore™ multicore processor delivering notebook performance with the power footprint of mobile, and Symbian OS SMP capability
- Launch of wide range of innovative devices including the G1 handset and the first Cortex™-A8 processor-powered mobile phones.
- Cortex-A8 processor vs Intel Atom power comparison
- Pegatron Netbook running Ubuntu
- Hybrid Notebook
- Ubuntu with Firefox 3
- Phoenix Technologies™ Hyperspace™ running on Cortex-A8 processor
- Thinkfree™ office suite with Sun’s Java SE on Qualcomm SnapDragon™-powered Inventec Netbook
- TI® OMAP™ Zoom2 reference design running Android.
- Alpha release of Ubuntu 9.04 for ARM will be shown running on Cortex-A8 processor-based systems. Ubuntu 9.04 is scheduled for full release in April 2009.
No hint of a new Nokia Tablet there but maybe Nokia want to keep it to themselves! Don’t get you’re hopes up too high though. We’re not expecting a new tablet to be available until the summer.
ARM preparing Cortex vs Atom comparison (and more) for MWC http://tinyurl.com/buj39c
Wow! That’ll be a lot of stuff to watch out! :-)
heh, not everyone is as web hungry as you are, chippy ;)
True……today.
What I would love to see is a MID, that would have enough capacity to store a lot of music and video. The lately announced SDXC card with capacity up to 2 TB might be the solution. It should be able to run some nice multimedia applications, for example Songbird, SMPlayer, VLC, Amarok and mainly Elisa (http://elisa.fluendo.com/), which has a perfect interface for touch screen devices.
Of course it should also have a document viewer, Internet browser, file manager, email client etc.
Do you have any idea which Linux programs can be compiled for ARM processors? It should be possible to see from Ubuntu or Debian ARM repositories. But I can’t find them.
there are very few open source applications that can’t be ported if they haven’t already been. It’s actually easier to list what doesn’t work rather then what does.
For a good idea of what runs the angstrom linux distro is specifically for embedded arm devices. The list of packages is here:
http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/repo/
That certainly isn’t an exhaustive list of what can run on arm but is a list of things that already run well. When the armv7 port of Ubuntu is done (it is scheduled for release alongside the rest of the 9.04 archs) pretty much all open source software in Ubuntu will run on ARM Cortex A8 chips
I wish someone would make an ARM/ATOM hybrid MID. Both processors in one device on the same board somehow would allow you to boot up whichever was needed for the task. Maybe some day they will figure how to do it.
The ARM processor does a great job in the e-ink devices (ebook reader devices like Sony reader PRS-505 and Amazon Kindle).
I bet for 3D applications and software OS, a Via chip, or the Atom processor will outperform.
In cases where battery life and price matters most, a mininotebook with reflective (non-backlit) 4-8-bit color screen, and SSD MLC storage, could be best powered by an ARM processor.
Is there any performance chart or details between ARM and ATOM processors relating multimedia application?
While ARM Holding is going up and Intel Corporation is moving down, I therefore have no doubt who will end up being a clear winner in the race to become no.1 micro chip producer in the years to come.
ARM with it ARM7 and ARM9 processor can easily take on Intel Atom for many reasons, firstly ARM7 and ARM9 consume less power and have longer standby times the Intel Atom processor. Secondly the ARM7 and ARM9 is much smaller in size then the Intel Atom, this will reduce cost for hardware vendors.
ARM Holding to date powers more then 95% of the smart phones, such as Nokia, iPhone, Blackberry and host of other communication devices such as TV Music player and set-top boxes.
The Snapdragon and the A4 for the iPad are similar to the combinations described in this article.
You have an ARM9 core combined with GPU in System on a chip silicon
1GHz Apple A4 Processor (ARM9 Compliant, ARM Mali GPU, SOC Architecture)
For Snapdragon they are combined together in a design by Qualcomm
In the case of A4 you have the ARM designs have been contracted by Apple owned PA Semi for manufacturing by Samsung under contract.