ARM’s “Sparrow” processor could appear in netbooks by 2011

During its presentation at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, mobile phone processor maker ARM announced plans for a new chip called “Sparrow” which could offer a multi core solution to netbooks in the future. According to the company, Sparrow is a small, inexpensive chip that’s based on the same processor chip being used in the Palm Pre, and has about enough processing power as an ARM11, the chip used in Apple’s iPhone. Now, you might wonder, how can a processor based on something made for smartphones (as hinted by the last few sentences) be used to power netbooks in the future? ARM answered this in their MWC presentation by saying that a Cortex-A9 can deliver around 1500 DMIPS of processing capability per core, with up to four cores. They even showed a multiprocessing-capable version of the Symbian OS. Ubuntu for ARM is scheduled to go public in April 2009, so we might see the first fruits of ARM’s labor in retail with netbooks, then.

Via PC World