<span class="content"> <p><font size="2">Intel used to be an ARM architecture licensee until 2006, when it sold its XScale division to Marvell. Intel had grown too large, too defocused, and in turn its core business had suffered. Don&rsquo;t be confused, the focus wasn&rsquo;t to be shifted back to desktop, but rather back to x86. </font></p> <p><font size="2">It wouldn&rsquo;t be until 2008 that Intel would reveal its more focused strategy unto the world: Atom.<br /> <br /> </font><span class="content"><font size="2">While ARM and its licensees played off Atom as not being remotely threatening, all of them knew that it was only a matter of time. Publicly they reasserted ARM&rsquo;s dominance in the market. Four billion ARM chips shipped last year alone. Intel sold on the order of tens of millions of Atoms. But privately, the wheels were in motion.</font></span></p> <p><font size="2">ARM inked a deal with Globalfoundries, AMD&rsquo;s manufacturing arm, to bring ARM based SoCs to the fab. This gives ARM the sort of modern manufacturing it needs to compete with Intel. The second thing that&rsquo;s changed is ARM licensees are now much more eager to talk about their architectures and what makes them special.</font></p> <p><font size="2">ARM offers two licensing arrangements to its partners: a processor license or an architecture license. A processor license allows the partner to take an ARM designed core and implement it in their SoC. An architecture license allows the partner to take an ARM instruction set and use it in their own processor. The former is easier to implement, while the latter allows the licensee the ability to optimize the architecture for its specific needs.<br /> <br /> </font></p> <p><font size="2">Companies like Samsung and TI hold ARM processor licenses. The Cortex A8 used in the iPhone 3GS (Samsung) and the Palm Pre (TI) is licensed directly from ARM. Marvell however has been an ARM architecture licensee for the past 5 years.</font></p> <h3><font size="2">It&rsquo;s an ARMADA</font></h3> <p><font size="2">Marvell is introducing a fleet of new SoCs (system on a chip) and the brand is called ARMADA. Get it ?<br /> </font><span class="content"><br /> <font size="2">These are SoCs so they&rsquo;ve got CPU, GPU, I/O and networking all included on a single chip. The entire ARMADA line is built on TSMC&rsquo;s 55nm process. The 100 is super low performance, useful in eBook readers, digital photo frames, IP cameras, etc... The 1000 is a multi-core version of the 100 with additional blocks designed for Blu-ray players, digital TVs and HD set-top boxes.<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3662">Read more...</a></font></span></p> </span>