ARM unveils chip to power $100 smartphones by 2013

Britain's ARM has unveiled a chip design that offers the same computing power as the silicon in today's high-end smartphones, but uses five times less energy, and which it says will enable sub-$100 devices to be on the market by 2013. The Cambridge-based company, whose architecture dominates the smartphone and tablet sector, said the new Cortex-A7 chip was its most energy efficient apps processor to date. "This core will enable apps processors at similar levels of performance to what you find in a high-end smartphone today, but in a couple of years that level of performance will be in a lower-end, and therefore a lower cost smartphone," Chief Executive Warren East said. "The Cortex-A7 ... will help connect the next billion people in developing markets." The power efficiency, which stems from the 28 nanometer design, will also benefit users of top-end smartphones because the Cortex-A7 is compatible with ARM's newest high-power Cortex-A15 processor, he said, and they can be deployed on a single chip.

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