Two of the world’s leading chip makers last week announced deals they said would lead to the creation of faster and more efficient processors for 2.5- and third-generation mobile devices.
Texas Instruments Inc. and Intel Corp. separately said they would license microprocessing technology from ARM Holdings plc, a United Kingdom-based company that designs reduced instruction set computing (RISC) microprocessors and related technology and software that enhances the performance and power efficiency of embedded applications. ARM licenses and sells its technology to electronics companies, which in turn manufacture, market and sell their own microprocessors.
TI and Intel, both of which already license a variety of technologies from ARM, said they are extending their licensing agreements to include ARM’s new v6 architecture. ARM licensees include companies ranging from L.M. Ericsson, Motorola Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. to Sun Microsystems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Symbian. ARM licensees typically buy the basic ARM architecture and then modify it for their own purposes.
TI said it would connect its digital signal processors with the new ARM v6 architecture to enhance its OMAP wireless Internet and multimedia chip architecture. Intel plans to use the v6 technology to expand its Xscale microarchitecture, which is the basis for the company’s high-performance, low-power mobile device processors.
The deals are important because Intel and TI are the first to license ARM’s v6 technology. The v6 architecture is the latest in a range of ARM technologies, including the ARM7 and ARM9 core, which are currently used in a variety of mobile phones, personal digital assistants and other wireless devices. Once it moves from the chip makers to device manufacturers, the new v6 architecture will “improve data synchronization, shared memory management and the efficient operation of advanced operating systems,” according to TI.
Gilles Delfassy, TI’s senior vice president and general manager for its wireless business unit, said the v6 architecture would support real-time and multimedia communications, as well as secure mobile commerce. He said the technology is also specifically designed for processing multiple tasks in 2.5G and 3G wireless terminals while conserving battery power.
ARM is not releasing the technical specifics of the v6 architecture until the Microprocessor Forum in October.
Neither TI nor Intel would provide a timeline on when their v6-based chips would be available in the market. Intel executives said the company would transition its Xscale technology to the v6 architecture during the next 12 to 18 months.
“We’re obviously going after the handheld space,” said Peter Green, the general manger of Intel’s handheld computing group.
Apart from the v6 news, TI also licensed ARM’s 9E Jazelle extensions for use in Java-based applications, while Intel purchased the company’s ARM7TDMI and ARM946E-S cores. TI said the Jazelle extensions would enhance the performance of Java technology-based multimedia applications in 2.5G and 3G wireless devices.
ARM’s v6 news comes just days after the company released its second-quarter earnings, showing pretax profits of $17.5 million. The revenues are up from the $11.9 million the company earned during the same period last year and slightly above analysts’ expectations. Also recently, PDA giant Palm Inc. said it would incorporate ARM technology in future Palm operating system-powered devices.
