ARM's Multicore Chips Aim for Netbooks

From PC Mag -

ARM has announced a new, low-cost processor called "Sparrow", a small, inexpensive chip which shares its instruction set with ARM's top-of-the-line Cortex A8. While one Sparrow chip has about the power of an existing ARM11 (used in the iPhone and other leading smartphones), Sparrow can also be used in a multi-core setup to multiply performance, generating computing power enough for PCs. In fact, ARM is trying to penetrate the netbook market with its multi-core Cortex A9 architecture.

So far, the netbook market has been dominated by Intel x86 compatible processors as the most popular OS for netbooks is Windows XP, which will not run on ARM chips. But as netbooks approach the $200 price mark, there will be more demand for low-cost, low-power ARM-based netbooks running Linux. Ubuntu and Debian Linux both run on ARM chips, and Ubuntu for ARM will go public in April 2009. That version of Ubuntu may even run on existing ARM devices.