14 DAY TRIAL // Symbian announced that future versions of the Symbian operating system will support the new ARM Symmetric Multi-processor (SMP) architecture used in ARM's new multicore processors which were revealed at the ARM Developers' Conference. SMP support in the next versions of Symbian will make use of the multiple CPU cores to improve performance only when needed. Thus, the cores will be accessed only when running demanding high-end multimedia applications and they will be powered down when not in use, leading to an increased battery life.
"Symbian's announcement to support the ARM SMPCore technology is a significant move, bringing the power and performance scalability advantages of SMP to smartphones and other high-end consumer devices," said Mike Inglis, Executive Vice-President, Sales and Marketing, ARM. "Symbian and ARM continue to collaborate in bringing world leading application processor and operating technologies to mobile devices in a highly dynamic market. Together, we plan to deliver exceptional performance combined with outstanding battery life for future mobile devices."
Multi-processing technology is the heart of the next generation Cortex-A9 processor designs. SMP CPUs consist of multiple cores which can be individually powered up and down by the operating system. This delivers high performance for high-end applications such as games, browser-based intelligent services and media-rich applications such as video streaming or TV recording, while offering low power consumption when the device is idle or executing less performance-critical tasks. Symbian believes SMP support is a vital direction which needs to be followed in order to improve battery life.
"Symbian is excited to announce full support for the highly capable ARM SMP multicore technology in Symbian OS," said J?rgen Behrens, Executive Vice-President, Marketing, Symbian. "Symbian OS SMP support will offer performance on demand for future converged mobile devices. It offers exceptional multicore performance for media-rich applications combined with the power efficiency required to continue to deliver industry leading battery life."
The first Symbian smartphones featuring Cortex-A9 MPCore processors are expected to be available in 2010.