Mobile phones processor

More than 80% of the chips inside mobile phones are designed by UK firm Advanced Risc Machines (Arm) and the most versatile phones of 2008, such as Apple's iPhone 3G, have one or more Arm 11 processing cores onboard.

The Arm 11 series debuted in 2003 and now, five years later, the phones and the applications they run are starting to stretch it to the limit.

Arm 11 family is starting to make way for the Cortex range of processors. Cortex A9 series will have 30-100 times the processing power of those 1993 era chips.

The first devices based around the Cortex A9 chips have started to appear. Towards the end of 2008, Archos released the A5 and A7 media tablets. These use a 5- or 7-inch touch-screen that gives an owner access to movies, games and web surfing.

all the chips in the Cortex A9 family are multi-core processors.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7810130.stm