

ARM Cortex-A9 SMP Announced: High-Performance ARM - neilc
http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/09/16/ARMCortexA9SMPDesignAnnounced.aspx

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DarkShikari
That's why we dedicated one of our Google Summer of Code spots this summer to
developing ARM support for x264:

<http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=142>

Now we have most of the core DSP functions optimized for NEON SIMD, we can
achieve realtime CIF video encoding on a ~400mhz Cortex A8. Now start doing
the math...

A Cortex A9 is faster than an A8, per clock.

The chips are planned to scale up to 2Ghz, 5 times faster than ours.

Quadcores are already hitting silicon.

At this rate, there might even be a market for ARM servers in a few years--
low-power, high-performance devices designed to minimize cooling and
electricity costs in the datacenter.

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Aegean
My startup is about virtualizing OS kernels on these processors.

I am a single founder and a kernel hacker. Single because not many people have
enough skills + want to start a startup. I always wonder if there are any real
kernel hackers here that might want to get involved. <http://www.l4dev.org>

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wagerlabs
How are you looking to make money?

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agl
... and where are you based?

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Aegean
Currently spread around the world as a few engineers. Works well so far.
Planning to have U.S. presence - either boston or the valley, and been to the
valley for exhibitions.

Making money is via dual-licensing the project. GPLv3 is too restrictive to
deploy, so people buy a commercial one.

Skill set needed: Linux Kernel, C, Assembler, Linkers & loaders, Python.

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rbanffy
I hope this ushers an era of architecture diversity. Diversity is one of the
most powerful tools in evolution's bag.

Besides that, this x86 world is utterly boring.

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neilc
Diversity for its own sake doesn't seem that compelling: there was previously
much more diversity in CPU architectures, and presumably there were valid
"evolutionary" reasons for that changing (e.g. network effects WRT software
support, economies of scale WRT building foundries).

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rbanffy
The network effect around software support to binary architectures is
irrelevant (next to, actually) when applied free and open-source software.

An ARM netbook has been proved viable regarding software availability because
Linux-based netbooks have already proved themselves viable. The fact they
employ x86 processors is a historical accident.

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kevbin
I think this might spawn a whole new category of very-small, energy-efficient
laptops primarily used to access electronic mail, world-wide web sites, and
those new-fangled instant-messaging services.

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zokier
"Internet Tablet" ring a bell? Check out N900, it has quite nice ARM CPU etc

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kevbin
I was making a funny. I'm hoping santa brings me an ARM netbook this year.

