A 2009 document highlighting Samsung’s ARM processor plans has been leaked. Although Samsung has ARM chips integrated in the phones, it’s the netbook market Samsung is more interested in. According to the document, Samsung is bullish on ARM-based netbook solutions with Linux OS instead of the current combination of Intel and Windows. In fact, Samsung deems their ARM-based chips and Linux OS like Chrome OS, Android and even Ubuntu can make a good combo.
Moving to the chip offerings, Samsung has planned a number of application processors (AP) that goes up to quad-core.
2010/2011:
Orion is based-on Cortex-A9 dual-core processor and has a clock speed of 800MHz. It will enjoy effortless migration of software and hardware from Samsung’s S5PV210 chip. It will be sampling in Q3 2010 and mass production is expected in Q1 2011.
Hercules is based-on Cortex-A9 dual-core processor and has a clock speed of 1GHz. It will be sampling in Q3 2011 and mass production is expected in Q1 2012.
Pegasus is based-on Cortex-A9 single-core processor and has a clock speed of 1GHz. It will be sampling in Q2 2011 and mass production is expected in Q4 2012.
Mercury is based-on Cortex-A5 (Sparrow) single-core processor and has a clock speed of 600MHz.
2012/2013:
Draco is based-on Cortex-A9 dual-core processor and has a clock speed of 1.2GHz.
Venus is based-on Cortex-A5 (Sparrow) dual-core processor and has a clock speed of 600GHz.
Finally, the Aquila is based-on Cortex-A9 (Eagle) quad-core processor and has a clock speed of 1.2GHz.
The main reason for them to go with ARM is to give a full-browsing platform with an all-day use battery and bring down the cost. The document referred to bring down the BOM cost to around $99.
EXCELLENT roadmap
Thank you Sammy!