Tudor Brown, president of the processor intellectual-property (IP) licensor, made it clear during a presentation: power consumption.

In the presentation at the 11th International Semiconductor 2009 (i-Sedex) trade show here, Brown said that the industry must work on lowering power consumption by 50 percent every two nodes. If it fails to address those issues, ''the industry could stall,'' he warned.

During the presentation, the ARM executive provided a glimpse of next-generation mobile devices. By 2013, a mobile device may use multi-core processors, based on 22-nm process technology, he said. Such a device could also embrace emerging LTE and 4G networks, DVC and other features for use in high-speed gaming and other functions.

To enable next-generation mobile devices, the industry must address what he called a ''battery gap.'' In other words, battery technology must improve. ''Moore's Law does not apply to battery technology,'' he said.

The industry also faces challenges in terms of process technology and lithography issues. Scaling remains expensive, but ''I don't think that this is the issue,'' he said. ''Lithography is not the thing that keeps me up at night.''

What does? Power consumption, he said. For example, he said, the industry must reduce power consumption by 50 percent at the 22-nm node.

To address those concerns, he said designers must consider some of the following steps: take a systems-level approach to the problem; use application-specific accelerators; address power in embedded memory designs; and look at multi-core processors.

There might be other issues for ARM as well. ARM (Cambridge, England) is set to outperform Intel in the netbook and smartbook markets over the next two and three years, but that prospect of success could trigger a takeover bid for the company, according to one analyst.