ARM to add muscle to more devices

Chip designer ARM last week revealed plans to put ARM-based chips into more devices, and announced a new reference design that will let chipmakers speed the development of ARM-based chips for products such as smartphones and PDAs.

ARM last week introduced the Cortex M3, a core design for low-cost but high-performance 32bit chips. It is designed to replace 8bit and 16bit chips embedded into hardware such as hard disks and other devices. It is the first of a family of products that will include more powerful chips capable of running Linux or Windows CE, the company said.

The Cortex M3 achieves high code density by supporting only the compact Thumb and Thumb 2 instruction sets, and this also enables the whole core to be implemented in just 60,000 gates, ARM said. This compares with over 125 million for Intel's latest Pentium 4 chips.

"It's about delivering 32bit performance for very cost-sensitive devices," said ARM's Cortex M3 product manager, Haydn Povey.

ARM also introduced a new PrimeXsys platform based on its ARM1176JZF-S core. This offers chipmakers a completely verified processor design containing an ARM processor plus key peripheral components. The design's features include ARM's TrustZone security technology and its Intelligent Energy Manager (IEM), designed to extend the battery life of mobile devices.

Many mobile and wireless devices are already based on ARM-compatible processors. Intel's XScale processor family and the Omap range of processors from Texas Instruments are based on ARM designs.