New ARM chips could boost performance for future Apple products, including the iPhone

Chip designer ARM announced this week new dual core Cortex-A9 processors capable of breaking the 2GHz barrier, perhaps foreshadowing the muscle behind Apple's future mobile devices. According to ARM, the Cortex-A9 MPCore “hard macro implementations” will enable chip makers to create even higher-performance devices from the low-power chips in “high density and thermally constrained environments” that the processors are usually found in, like the iPhone and iPod touch. In addition, the new design consumes less than 250mW per CPU while at peak performance. “The Cortex-A9 MPCore processor has already been widely accepted as the processor of choice for high-performance embedded applications across a broad spectrum of demanding consumer and enterprise devices,” said Eric Schorn, vice president of marketing for ARM's processor division. “ARM’s parallel development of advanced, optimized physical IP components demonstrates a