Sunday, November 3, 2002
Samsung unveils its own 1.2GHz ARM processor
Posted by Jason Dunn in "NEWS" @ 12:59 PM
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=5853
Very interesting - Samsung has their own ARM processor, presumably ARM5 (although it doesn't state as much). I know many of you are extremely touchy about this, but as we see more vendors releasing ARM CPUs, I hope Microsoft's decision to not optimize strictly for Xscale starts to make some sense to you. What I'm most curious about is whether or not Samsung's Pocket PC Phone edition will use this CPU at some point, and how efficient their ARM4 execution it - because that's really the crux of the problem with the Xscale CPUs: poor ARM4 instruction execution.
"Samsung Electronics Corp revealed details of what the company claims is the first 1.2 GHz implementation of an ARM processor core at the Microprocessor Forum last week. The ARM architecture is one of the most widely licensed and implemented embedded processor solutions in the world, and is the industry's leading provider of 32-bit embedded RISC microprocessors with almost 75% of the market, according to analyst Andrew Allison . ARM offers a wide range of processor cores based on a common architecture to deliver high performance with low power consumption and system cost.
The core is code named Halla, after the highest mountain in South Korea. According to Jin Cheon Kim, the director of the processor architecture lab at Samsung, the core is pin compatible with the ARM1020E, which is built on a 130 nanometer process and operates at 325MHz. He also said it provides significant performance advancement beyond that core or the ARM-based XScale from Intel Corp. Samsung, which has design experience from making Alpha processors, "is applying our expertise in high speed processors to the ARM design."
Very interesting - Samsung has their own ARM processor, presumably ARM5 (although it doesn't state as much). I know many of you are extremely touchy about this, but as we see more vendors releasing ARM CPUs, I hope Microsoft's decision to not optimize strictly for Xscale starts to make some sense to you. What I'm most curious about is whether or not Samsung's Pocket PC Phone edition will use this CPU at some point, and how efficient their ARM4 execution it - because that's really the crux of the problem with the Xscale CPUs: poor ARM4 instruction execution.
"Samsung Electronics Corp revealed details of what the company claims is the first 1.2 GHz implementation of an ARM processor core at the Microprocessor Forum last week. The ARM architecture is one of the most widely licensed and implemented embedded processor solutions in the world, and is the industry's leading provider of 32-bit embedded RISC microprocessors with almost 75% of the market, according to analyst Andrew Allison . ARM offers a wide range of processor cores based on a common architecture to deliver high performance with low power consumption and system cost.
The core is code named Halla, after the highest mountain in South Korea. According to Jin Cheon Kim, the director of the processor architecture lab at Samsung, the core is pin compatible with the ARM1020E, which is built on a 130 nanometer process and operates at 325MHz. He also said it provides significant performance advancement beyond that core or the ARM-based XScale from Intel Corp. Samsung, which has design experience from making Alpha processors, "is applying our expertise in high speed processors to the ARM design."
