ARM is offering two new processors — the Cortex-R5 and Cortex-R7 — which will help next-generation smartphones and tablets take better advantage of faster broadband, the company said on Monday.
With LTE, WiMAX and HSPA increasing data speeds, devices have to keep up. The Cortex-R5 and Cortex-R7 processors can keep up with single or dual cores, and clock speeds at up to 1.66 GHz or 2.53 GHz, respectively. One core can, for example, be instructed to handle download traffic and the other upload traffic, according to Andrew Frame, product manager at ARM. Smartphone vendors can also choose to lower the clock speed, to lower power requirements.
The Cortex-R5 is already shipping to ARM’s partners, and the Cortex-R7 will join it in the third quarter. Products that user the latter are expected to start shipping towards the end of the year.
At CES 2011, the momentum behind ARM chips was solidified when Microsoft announced the next version of Windows will support ARM, and when graphics company Nvidia announced it is making its first GPU/CPU hybrid chip based on ARM Cortex A15 processors.
In related news, Intel announced today it has completed the $1.4 Billion acquisition of Infineon AG’s Wireless Solution business , to tie baseband processors into the company’s CPU solutions. The new wireless business will now be called Intel Mobile Communications (IMC) and will operate as a standalone business entity within Intel’s Architecture Group to enable continuity of existing customer sales, projects and support, including ARM-based products.
Intel also showed off its Medfield-based smartphone. The Medfield platform will include a power-efficient version of the Atom processor, which will be integrated inside a chip code-named Penwell. Medfield processors are expected to debut in shipping devices later this year.
