14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like Intel's highly successful Atom processor, which is currently featured in the majority of netbooks on the market, is about to face some competition soon. Interestingly enough, the new product will not come from Intel's long archrival, Advanced Micro Devices, but rather from a company that, for quite some time now, has been designing processing units for ultra portable computer devices, such as smartphones and mobile handsets. ARM's Cortex family of processors is expected to go neck and neck with Intel's Atom processor, as it will be powering some of the upcoming netbooks.
Up until now, Intel's Atom has seen few major competitors, that could seriously threaten its market position, and that's primarily because most systems vendors decided to go with Intel's low-power solution, to the disadvantage of similar products from VIA or AMD. However, that could change with the release of the new Cortex A8-powered netbooks, which are likely to arrive even before the end of the year.
According to Rob Coombs, director of mobile solutions at ARM, a number of manufacturers have already shown interest in using ARM's processing units for their upcoming netbook systems. Unfortunately, the names of these manufacturers can't be disclosed at this time, but we should be expecting some announcements for ARM-powered netbooks in the next couple of weeks.
The Cortex 8 processor is a successor of the ARM11, which is considered one of the company's most successful products, being currently featured in numerous smartphones and mobile handsets. The processor’s architecture isn't natively supported by the mainstream Windows operating system, but Windows CE, a version of Apple's OS X and several Linux distributions do come with support for it.
The news of the Cortex 8-powered netbooks could also be related to the ongoing rumors of an upcoming Apple tablet, UMPC or netbook, given that Apple's OS supports the architecture of ARM's processors. If so, chances are good that we may see such a device even before the end of the year.