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Though the Motorola Droid and Apple iPhone have different chassis, their high-octane engines are similar.

The internal similarities begin with performance: both devices are fast. The iPhone 3GS is already distinguished for its speed. And the Droid is quickly garnering similar accolades.

The Motorola Droid has a radically different exterior compared with the iPhone but uses a speedy Cortex-A8 ARM chip like the Apple phone.

(Credit: CNET Reviews)

"The Droid makes a big leap in internal performance. Compared with its rather sluggish Android predecessors," CNET Reviews said, citing the speed at which the Droid opens applications and menus and scrolls through lists and switches display screens.

"We're really pumped to see all the industry excitement it's created," said Jeff Dougan, the OMAP 3 product marketing manager at Texas Instruments, which supplies the OMAP 3430 processor that powers the Droid. "This is the first handset that truly realizes the full potential of Android," he said, referring to Google's Android 2.0 operating system that runs on the Droid phone.

The TI processor, like the one in the iPhone, is based on an a new architecture called Cortex-A8 from U.K.-based chip design house ARM, whose wide variety of chips populate most of the world's cell phones. Dougan says most smartphones currently on the market use an older, lower-performance ARM architecture than the Cortex-A8--with the exception of the Palm Pre, which opted for the newer TI chip. The Cortex-A8 provides a "two to three times performance boost" over older architectures, according to Dougan.

Max Baron, an analyst at Microprocessor Report, says the chips in the Droid and the iPhone (see not below) are so alike that differences are more dependent on the operating systems the two chips use and how successfully each phone maker optimizes the OS. "With chips that have near-similar specs, the optimum OS and the look-and-feel of the user interface may make or break the product," Baron said.

The core of TI's OMAP3 processor.

(Credit: Texas Instruments)

"The caveat, however, is that even small differences in chips will surface and become important differentiators as soon as the market forces you to increase the screen size or add more pixels per screen, or execute more power-consuming applications," he added.

The raw MHz ratings on the chips are slightly different. The processor in the iPhone 3GS--which is believed to be based on the Samsung S5PC100 processor--runs at 600MHz, according to most accounts. The Motorola Droid's TI chip is rated at 550MHz though theoretically it can be run as fast as 600MHz, according to TI's Dougan.

Both phones also use PowerVR graphics from Imagination Technologies--a company that both Apple and Intel have invested in, testifying to how hot its ultramobile graphics technology is. The PowerVR SGX is renowned for its ability to process several million triangles-per-second--a key indicator of graphics chip performance--blowing away other phones and the previous version of the iPhone.

Other internal specifications are similar between the two phones, including memory capacity (either 16GB or 32GB) and communications chips that offer 3G, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth connections.

So, internally the Droid is every bit the iPhone's equal. And future versions of TI OMAP 3 chips that may appear in upcoming Droids will be backed by formidable ecosystems, according to Baron. "Investments in application software may lean more toward the TI components," said Baron, given TI's strong support of the entire chip ecosystem, including auxiliary chips and software development tools.

Note:: Apple's and Samsung's reluctance to release information about the processor used in the iPhone 3GS has made it difficult to determine if the chip is based on the Samsung S5PC100, according to the Microprocessor Report's Baron. Many iPhone 3GS reviews and teardowns, however, state explicitly that the iPhone's processor is essentially the Samsung S5PC100 processor.

Quick: Name an Intel rival whose name begins with an "A" and is abbreviated by three letters.

AMD? How about ARM. Even with attention focused on the immediate impact of Intel's earnings coming Tuesday afternoon, pesky questions linger about a likely future in which U.K.-based ARM and its satellite of chip and device makers pose a growing competitive threat. Maybe more so than Intel's traditional rival, Advanced Micro Devices.

Two recent statements from analysts argue that the camp of companies that make chips based on designs from ARM will dictate future competition in mobile computing. These companies include Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Samsung, and, in the future, Apple.

New Tripoli, Penn.-based The Information Network said late last month that ARM processors, not Intel's Atom chip, will gain the largest chunk of the Netbook market in 2012--about a 55 percent market share. Netbooks are small, ultralight laptops typically priced under $400.

The market research firm argues that small ARM-based laptops, dubbed "smartbooks," will thrive under subsidized services from telephone carriers "modeled after Hewlett-Packard (cheap printer, expensive ink) and the mobile service providers (cheap cellphone, expensive monthly wireless charge)."

And on Monday EE Times cited analyst Didier Scemama, with ABN AMRO Bank NV, who said there is a "shift towards computing based on ARM-Linux and away from Intel-Microsoft over the next technology cycle," which he said would begin in the second half of 2010, because ARM processors would match Intel chips in performance and beat them on power consumption and possibly cost.

The analyst also postulated that eventually Microsoft would offer a "high-level Windows operating system" running on ARM chips and that ARM could capture 30 percent of the notebook PC processor market by 2014. He speculated, too, that ARM might be taken over by the chip companies that are its licensees.

All of this competition from ARM might be good for consumers but not necessarily for future Intel revenue streams. A report last week from DisplaySearch said that the growing market share of Netbooks has pulled down revenue in the portable PC market due to a low average selling price. Revenues for Netbooks rose to $3 billion in the second quarter of the year, jumping 264 percent over the second quarter of 2008, while traditional notebooks saw second-quarter sales fall to $23.2 billion, a 14 percent decline from the second quarter of 2008, according to DisplaySearch.

These are all just forecasts, of course, and pricier mainstream Intel-based laptops running Microsoft or Apple operating systems today account for the vast majority of the market. Moreover, other analysts argue that consumers will not necessarily flee en masse to ARM-based laptops as it will be difficult to displace a longstanding consumer preference for Intel-based machines running Windows.

Consumers won't see a "Qualcomm Inside" sticker on new Windows Mobile phones, but the chip supplier is playing a big role in powering the first crop of phones based on Microsoft's new operating system.

Microsoft announced on Tuesday the first phones to carry the Windows Phone brand and run the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system--which offers Adobe Flash support, an upgraded browser, and menus that can be navigated with a finger. AT&T has already announced smartphones, with dozens more expected to be rolled out by the end of the year.

HTC HD2 packs a 1GHZ Qualcomm processor

The Tilt 2 and Pure both use Qualcomm MSM7000 series processors, as do a number of other new Windows Mobile phones. These chips typically run at 528GHz--a fairly common speed grade for mobile phones.

Toshiba TG01

But it's at the high end where things get interesting. The Apple iPhone-like HTC HD2 and Acer neoTouch use Qualcomm's latest-and-greatest processor, the 1GHz Snapdragon, also known as the QSD8250.

The HTC HD2, for example, packs 512 MB of ROM memory, 448 MB of RAM, claims video playback battery life of up to 8 hours, and a uses a relatively large 4.3-inch diagonal screen (specifications here.)

And Toshiba has been shipping a Windows phone since June that also uses the Snapdragon processor. Only 9.9 millimeters thick, it integrates a 4.1-inch WVGA 800x480 384k pixel resistive touchscreen and comes with support for 3G HSPA, Wi-Fi, GPS, and assisted-GPS.

Snapdragon itself supports high-definition (720p) video decode and cameras ranging up to 12 megapixels.

Qualcomm won't stop at 1GHz: the San Diego-based company has demonstrated Netbooks running a 1.3GHz Snapdragon processor and will eventually push the chip to 1.5GHz. Future Qualcomm chips will be dual-core and support 1080p (laptop-class) high-definition video.

But there is still plenty of chip competition in the smartphone market. Though Qualcomm's presence is unmistakable in this first crop of Windows Mobile 6.5 phones, it competes with Texas Instruments in the broader cell phone and smartphone markets. "Qualcomm is a newcomer on the block in terms of applications processors," said Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at market researcher In-Stat, adding that TI's OMAP processor is the most widely-used processor.

A standalone applications processor is roughly analogous to the main Intel or Advanced Micro Devices processor in a PC: it is basically the brains of a smartphone.

Updated on October 5 at 2:00 p.m. PDT: adding information about support for iPhone

Adobe Systems has garnered the support of mobile heavy hitters such as Google, Motorola, Nvidia, Palm, RIM, and Qualcomm for its new Flash Player 10.1 software for smartphones, Netbooks, and other mobile devices. The company plans to announce the support Monday at its developer conference in Los Angeles.

Adobe's goal is to get Flash Player 10.1 accelerated directly on the chips in smartphones, Netbooks, and small laptops based on the ARM chip architecture, called smartbooks. To date, Flash video acceleration has not been available widely on mobile devices.

"It's critical to support in hardware because (Flash) video is really computationally intensive," Tom Barclay, Adobe senior product marketing manager for Flash Player, said in an interview. "Putting that on the hardware provides the ability to play it back fluidly...so you're not going to drain the battery on these devices."

Though Flash-based video is available on virtually all PCs, "the vast majority of mobile devices have been fundamentally closed," according to Barclay. "This means there is a single (device maker) or carrier or handset manufacturer that can stop technology from getting onto those devices. And that's one of the reasons why the Web as been so slow to be directly accessible from those devices."

Toward the end of getting Flash to run directly on small mobile devices, Adobe created the Open Screen Project. "The Open Screen project is about making more of those devices open. In particular, providing flash player for free in an open manner with the requirement that (device suppliers) make it open for developers," Barclay said.

Adobe also announced on Monday that Google has joined the Open Screen Project initiative. Handset manufacturers such as Motorola will ship Google Android based devices with Flash Player support "early next year," according to a Motorola statement. Companies such as Nvidia, Broadcom, Nokia, RIM, and ARM chip suppliers such as Qualcomm, are all participants in the Open Screen Project.

Conspicuous by its absence was Apple. "Flash is not available on the iPhone at this point," said Adrian Ludwig, group manager, flash platforms at Adobe. "So far, we haven't received the support that we need from Apple." (Note: Adobe announced Monday that programmers will be able to create native iPhone applications using Adobe's Flash Professional CS5 developer tool, currently in beta testing, then offer their programs as an Apple App Store download.)

Apple aside, this is all part of an aggressive push by Adobe to get acceleration on mobile devices. More than 75 percent of video on the Web is delivered through the Flash Player, according to Ludwig. "Having the Flash player on your device means you're able to access all the content out there on the Web," Ludwig said, referring to referring to such sites as YouTube, the video inside MySpace, and Facebook, as well as Fox News and CNN.

Games are also a target. Ludwig pointed to Flash-based games, such as Playfish and FarmVille, played on social-networking sites.

A public developer beta of Flash 10.1 is expected ... Read more

Query: Who makes the Apple-branded chip in the iPhone? Answer: Samsung. This nontrivial detail translated into smartphone chip market share gains for Samsung in the second quarter, according to iSuppli.

Apple iPhone market share gains drove Samsung chip rise.

(Credit: Apple)

The iPhone, largely due to the popularity of the 3GS model, accounted for 13.9 percent of global smartphone shipments in the second quarter, up from 10.1 percent in the first quarter, according to iSuppli. As a result, Samsung accounted for 15.9 percent of global revenue from sales of standalone applications processors. An applications processor is roughly analogous to the main Intel or Advanced Micro Devices processor in a PC: it is basically the brains of a smartphone.

Samsung's market share was up nearly 1 percent from the first quarter, iSuppli said, though it still trailed No. 1 supplier Texas Instruments. iSuppli defines a "standalone" applications processor as digital signal- or logic-based processors not integrated with the digital baseband function.

"Since the introduction of the first (iPhone) in January 2007, Samsung has occupied the key applications processor slot in Apple's iPhone line," Francis Sideco, principal analyst of wireless communications for iSuppli, said in a statement. "With the new 3GS model allowing the iPhone to gain share in the smartphone market, Samsung also is claiming a larger portion of standalone applications processor shipments."

As with previous iPhone models, the 3GS--introduced in June--integrates a Samsung processor based on the ARM architecture. The processor accounted for $14.46, or 8.4 percent, of the materials cost of the iPhone 3GS based on pricing in late June, iSuppli said.

"The partnership between Apple and Samsung on the applications processor in the iPhone has been a major coup for Samsung, establishing it as a player in the market and allowing it to challenge the incumbent leader, Texas Instruments," Sideco said.

The big question, however, is how long a good thing will last for Samsung. Sideco added that "there is a lot of speculation as to whether Apple's acquisition of PA Semi will change the parameters of this partnership." Apple announced its purchase of PA Semi in March 2008.

One of the most rapidly circulating rumors has Apple using a PA Semi design in the upcoming Apple tablet. The latest word is that the screen size is about 10 inches diagonally, meaning that a tablet will require more processor and graphics horsepower than a smaller device like the iPhone.

Although Texas Instruments lost some share to Samsung in the second quarter, the U.S. chip giant retained its dominant position in the market, with a share of 24.4 percent. "Texas Instruments continues to lead the market on the strength of its Open Multimedia Application Platform (OMAP) line of applications processors," Sideco said.

Cambridge, England-based chip company ARM on Wednesday announced the development of dual-core, quad-core, and eight-core Cortex A9 processor designs, explicitly aimed at markets currently served by Intel's x86 chips and IBM's PowerPC.

"This is a huge departure from what we've done in the past", Eric Schorn, vice president of marketing for ARM's processor division, told ZDNet UK. "We really wanted to take off the handcuffs and see what could be done with performance, performance, performance."

The new designs, available in two variants optimized for low power consumption or high performance, are intended for use by companies building their own chips. ARM claims that the new processors, which can run at up to 2GHz, are up to eight times more efficient than Intel's low-power chips in terms of performance per watt, with the high-performance part running at five times the throughput of Intel's Atom chip for similar power levels.

The low-power part delivers twice the performance at a quarter the power, according to the company's published benchmarks.

"The sweet spot for most customers is dual-core," said Schorn, "but the base design can go up to quad-core and some partners are already building those. Eight way is coming. Everyone's high-end road map is putting down more cores, and we do that. We're headed in the direction of Intel's mainstream processors. We have other plans that surpass the current performance, and we'll intercept Intel in a high-margin area, not just with Atom."

The dual-core parts, which are designed to be made using fabrication company TSMC's 40-nanometer chip manufacturing process, can be licensed now with delivery of the finished designs to partners in the fourth quarter of 2009. ARM itself will be making evaluation chips available to partners and software designers in the first quarter of 2010.

To date, ARM has mostly partnered with companies making components for wireless, consumer, and automotive equipment. However, this new design will see new enterprise partners coming on board. In particular, Schorn said that the high-performance multicore ARM approach would open up parts of the market currently dominated by companies with large proprietary design teams -- "blowing the doors off that by offering freely available IP," as he put it.

"Enterprise is a key opportunity," continued Schorn. "Our existing partners are executing extremely well in their existing markets. We have a new license signed, with a number in the pipeline, and enterprise is well represented. The design is applicable to all sorts of servers, is cache-coherent so can do SMP, and will be wonderful for Linux, Apache and other parts of the enterprise stack".

Earlier this week, ARM announced that it had joined the Linux Foundation.

ARM also intends the multicore Cortex A9 design to be used in consumer equipment. "If you look at the high end of embedded systems, Netbooks and the like, there's not much innovation relative to the mobile phone area. We want to take the rate of change of mobile phone design and innovation into other areas. Consumers will see a lot more diversity at a lot faster pace," said Schorn.

The company says it gets its claimed level of performance at low power by having very finely tuned control over the different areas of the chip, with seven power zones able to turn off parts of the cache, maths, media, and general-processing areas automatically when idle.

Schorn said that he was not concerned by ARM's lack of Windows 7 compatibility. "We don't have a Big Windows announcement to make. We do have staff at Redmond, and we'll see what the future will hold. Talking about Windows is the wrong way of looking at it.

"If you look at what's happening with Web-centric, internet-oriented demographics and things like Java virtual machines, just-in-time compilers, widgets and so on, it's not architecturally dependent. Look at Samsung with Yahoo widgets in its televisions. I don't see the need for Big Windows on your television."

Rupert Goodwins of ZDNet UK reported from London.

Updated on September 16 at 6:30 a.m. PDT: adding information from Hironori Kasahara, a professor of computer science at Waseda University

Large electronics companies are building a chip for consumer electronics devices in Japan, while a China-based device manufacturer said it is working on devices using the ARM chip design, according to reports.

Waseda University's Hironori Kasahara wrote software for chips that Japanese companies are developing.

(Credit: Waseda Daigaku)

In Japan, some of the country's largest electronics and chip manufacturers are collaborating in an effort to develop a new low-power processor design for consumer electronics devices, according to Nikkei, which Forbes reported earlier.

The Japan-based group includes Fujitsu, Toshiba, Panasonic Renesas Technology, NEC, Hitachi, and Canon. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will offer between 3 billion and 4 billion yen (between $32 million and $43 million) to support the project, according to Nikkei.

Each company will develop their own central processing unit, or CPU. The report claimed that the chips would be compatible with "energy-saving" software developed by Hironori Kasahara, a professor of computer science at Waseda University, Nikkei said. Kasahara said he was developing an application programming interface (API) for multi-core processors, in response to an e-mail query.

A prototype is able to operate using less than 30 percent of normal power consumption and works even when a power outlet is not available, according to Nikkei.

Once a standard is established--the companies are targeting 2012--the CPU will be used in TVs, digital cameras, and other products. The companies may also sell the chip to other companies for use in automobiles, servers, and robots, Nikkei said.

That doesn't mean, however, the CPU will be adopted across Asia. Following the Nikkei article, Taipei-based Digitimes reported that circuit board makers in Taiwan are not enthusiastic about the prospects of a new CPU architecture.

A more immediate threat to Intel--and possibly a more potent rival to any chip that emerges from the Japan-based chip consortium--is ARM, the power-stingy processor design already used by a host of chip manufacturers including Samsung, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm.

Hon Hai--also referred to as Foxconn--the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer, is readying small laptop designs based on the ARM processor, according to various reports.

A special assistant to the Hon Hai CEO was quoted by Reuters as saying that the company has "a few smartbook projects" based on the ARM chip. Smartbooks are essentially a smartphone in a larger format, such as a small laptop or tablet. These designs are being promoted by Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Freescale, among other chip manufacturers.

Intel is developing a new version of the Atom processor, a so-called system-on-chip, or SOC, that is slated for use in smartphones as well as consumer electronics products. The smartphone and consumer electronics segments are already highly competitive, unlike the PC market, which is dominated by Intel.

Speculation about a rumored Apple tablet may be an exercise in futility, but it is an interesting exercise nonetheless. In this case, my speculation will extend to what may be inside an Apple tablet.

Will the design philosophy spring from the notion of an upsized iPhone or a downsized MacBook? I believe it will be the former since this is a more natural evolution of the hardware and software. But I will entertain both options.

Because this tablet is rumored to appear in 2010, the Intel silicon possibility--however remote--is, I believe, as follows.

First scenario: Intel's in a tablet with laptop lineage. This will offer higher performance and better power savings than the current Atom processor--which is Intel's most power-stingy chip technology. Pine Trail integrates a graphics processor onto the same piece of silicon as the main processor--a first for Intel. (Intel's future "Arrandale" Core i series mobile processor, in contrast, will put the main processor and graphics into the same chip package, not onto the same chip.)

Intel's next-generation integrated graphics silicon technology is largely unknown. But tablets should deliver graphics performance that doesn't disappoint, as this is a shortcoming often brought up by critics of Netbooks.

A real tablet based on a 600MHz ARM processor: the Archos 7

(Credit: Archos)

The more likely non-Intel tablet.

Second scenario: Apple's ARM silicon in an upsized iPod/iPhone. This seems a much more likely scenario than Intel silicon. The that, according to reports, runs at 600MHz. How Apple would tweak this design for a tablet is so highly speculative that I will not hazard much of a guess.

Suffice to say, inside of Apple there is more intellectual capital invested in ARM-based designs than Intel-based ones because of the and the success of the iPhone. And the fact that the iPhone's ARM processor has "Apple" stamped on it should not be overlooked.

Here's the guess that I will hazard: a faster processor analogous to Qualcomm's ARM-based 1GHz Snapdragon processor. that they had co-developed a 1GHz chip similar to the processor that currently powers the iPhone 3GS. And this is the same kind of processor that Qualcomm is targeting for , which could be either a Netbook or tablet.

Freescale's concept "smartbook" tablet

(Credit: Freescale)

Graphics is less clear but U.K.-based Imagination Technologies provides the PowerVR graphics core inside the iPhone's ARM silicon. And Apple has expressed a keen interest in Imagination in the chip design firm to 9.5 percent.

And as a final thought, it is interesting to note that speculation about an Apple "iPad" has gone beyond mere individuals to . Do they know something that we don't?

Updated at 12:45 a.m. PDT

Microsoft's Zune HD will use one of the most powerful chips to go into a portable media player yet: Nvidia's multicore Tegra processor.

Nvidia's Tegra chip integrates multiple processor cores

(Credit: Nvidia)

Tegra packs two processor cores based on intellectual property from U.K.-based chip designer ARM. One is the main processor--based on the ARM11 core--which runs the operating system. Tegra's defining feature, however, is an additional Nvidia GeForce graphics chip.

"Nvidia brings powerful graphics to the portable media player. This is a unique capability," said Jeff Orr, senior analyst for mobile content at ABI Research.

In total, Tegra integrates eight independent processors, according to Michael Rayfield, general manager of Nvidia's mobile business unit. "We accelerate Flash, we have HD video, we do acceleration of rendering of Web pages on the GPU," Rayfield said Wednesday in a conference call, referring to the graphics processing unit. "The Zune HD will be an amazing showcase of what Tegra is capable of doing."

Its processing prowess notwithstanding, Tegra's design flies in the face of the hot, heat-sink-clad Nvidia graphics processors that power the fastest gaming rigs today. Tegra uses less than 0.5 watts of power, an attribute the chip inherits from its power-stingy ARM parentage. This trickle of power consumption is a tiny fraction of Nvidia's bread-and-butter desktop GeForce processors that are often rated well over 100 watts.

The Zune HD comes with a 3.3-inch, 16:9 OLED (480x272 resolution) screen. And also includes an HD (high-definition) Radio, HD (720p) video out, Wi-Fi, a Web browser (with tap-to-zoom technology), built-in accelerometer, and touchscreen QWERTY keyboard.

Audio codec technology has been developed by PortalPlayer, which Nvidia acquired in 2006.

Zune HD will also include a full-screen Internet browser optimized for multitouch functionality.

CNET Reviews applauded the Zune HD:. "This thing was worth the wait, folks...The Zune finally has the power to make good on the promise of delivering one of the richest music experiences on a portable device."

The Zune HD is the first of many Tegra-based devices to come. "There's about 50 devices in design right now with Tegra," Rayfield said. They range from media players to smartphones to smartbooks to Web pads. Smartphones based on the Tegra are due toward the end of the year.

"The next generation should be better. Current Tegra chips use the ARM11MP processor, next gen will use the faster Cortex-A9. Other IP in the chip is Nvidia's," said Tom R. Halfhill a senior analyst for Microprocessor Report.