Commentary: ARM's Osprey broadens the battle front with Intel

The launch of a dual-core Cortex A9 processor hard-macro called Osprey, ready for manufacture by TSMC in a 40-nm general-purpose process, with plenty of comparisons to the current generation of Intel Atom processor, signposts ARM's aspirations — to take Intel on in its traditional performance domain.

Osprey is also clearly aimed at the netbook space, but the argument that by designing in TSMC's 40G process ARM is not going to tread on the toes of some of its semiconductor partners, who are getting ready launch their own Cortex-A9 chips in 40-nm low-leakage processes, is not clear cut.

According to Eric Schorn, vice president of marketing for ARM's processor division, the semiconductor partners who have already licensed Cortex-A9 in soft form are aiming at "wireless."

Those licensees include Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics, Samsung, NEC, Renesas, Toshiba and NXP. But any notebook, netbook, smartbook, or indeed just about any computing device these days needs to be connected to the internet. And mobility demands no wires, which means wireless and low power consumption in the processor and every other aspect of the design. The distinction would appear to be subtle if not moot.

Now ARM is bringing forward Osprey so companies will be able to go to TSMC and quickly develop system chips aimed at higher performance applications. Perhaps the key can be found in Schorn's statement "We are into unlocking some new markets; netbooks, smartbooks, MIDs, consumer electronics in TV and entertainment devices, and enterprise networking, such as things like printers."

One interpretation could be that the existing soft, configurable and architectural ARM core licensees are not unlocking those markets for ARM, or at least not yet. Meanwhile the Cortex-A9 hard macro already has it first licensee "extending the Cortex-A9 into new markets with significant performance uplift."