Grabbing Mobile Computing By the ARM

By Wayne Maruna

Most everyone is familiar with the name Intel, which makes processors and chipsets found in the majority of home computers.  You may also be familiar with AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) which is Intel’s chief competitor.  AMD builds excellent chips, usually selling them at a more favorable price than Intel.  But you may never have heard of ARM Holdings.  ARM originally stood for ‘Advanced RISC Machine’, and RISC in turn stood for ‘Reduced Instruction Set Computer’.  You would likely be surprised to learn that your household may have as many ARM-based processors as Intel or AMD combined.

The simplicity of design of ARM-based processors allows them to function with very low power requirements, making them ideal for use in mobile applications.  According to Wikipedia, as of 2007 it was estimated that 98% of the more than one billion mobile phones sold each year use at least one ARM processor.  Further, ARM processors can be found in 90% of all 32-bit RISC applications, largely in consumer products like PDAs, digital music players, hand-held game consoles, and calculators.

ARM actually licenses the intellectual properties behind their designs to companies who wed the ARM core with their own extensions and build the actual semiconductor chips.  Current and former licensees include names like Apple, LG, Nintendo, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sharp, and Texas Instruments.  ARM has sold 600 processor licenses to over 200 companies.  According to the ARM website, over 20 billion ARM-based processor chips have been sold to date, and the current shipping rate is over ten million per day!

I recently read an article wherein Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO for another major chip manufacturer, Nvidia, suggested that the future PC would look like today’s ‘smartphone’.  Speaking at Nvidia’s annual conference in September, 2010, Huang said “This (smartphone) is the first computer that is equipped with all kinds of sensors, cameras, microphones, GPSs, and accelerometers. This is the first computer that's context aware. Situation aware. Who knows, someday it may be self-aware."

            As CNET News points out, Huang raises the question:  Will a future PC be a powerful, multi-CPU handheld device that wirelessly connects to large displays and a host of other devices, so the PC is carried around in your pocket or small satchel and then connects on the fly to larger devices and/or peripherals?

            I’ve got news.  The future is here…or almost.

            While there may be no industry standard definition of what a smartphone is, it is generally recognized to be a mobile phone offering advanced PC-like functionality, going beyond voice calling to include data, email, internet, and a built-in keyboard.

            I’m admittedly a late-comer to the whole ‘smartphone’ phenomenon.  When I retired this past March, I was probably the only plant staff member that did not have a Blackberry.  Didn’t want one.  The company already owned your body for, what, 50 hours a week?  Accepting a Blackberry meant they would own your soul, 24/7/365.  It was futile to try and have a person-to-person conversation with a Blackberry equipped co-worker.  The slightest phone vibration triggered some Pavlovian response whereby their attention was immediately redirected to their smartphone.  Someday in the future, instead of treating carpal tunnel syndrome, we’ll be treating thumbs worn out from spinning mini-trackballs on Blackberries.

            For personal use, my wife and I had been using basic cell phones from an outfit called Net10.  It was hard to beat the price.  At $16 per month for 300 minutes, it was all I needed to order pizza or Chinese take-out while on my way home.  But one of our phones developed a problem, and the downside of dealing with Net10 was their horrible South-American based tech support. We decided that with increased leisure time to travel, it might be wise to invest in a ‘smartphone’ to enable us to get info from the car when needed.  We really wanted an iPhone so that my Farmville-addicted wife could maintain her ‘crops’ while traveling, but as of this writing AT&T still did not have a 3G high-speed network in New Bern, and our house was pretty much a dead zone to their towers.  So I opted for a Samsung Fascinate phone from Verizon.  This is one of the growing list of phones that employ the Android operating system.  I’ve had it about a week at this writing, and as I continue to play with it, I am blown away by its capabilities.

            In addition to being able to deal with email and internet, the phone came with 40 applications (apps) installed, and I have since downloaded 20 other apps, mostly free, from the Android Market.  The phone has GPS built-in.  I clicked on the search engine, then clicked on Movies, and I was presented with the movies currently showing at New Bern’s two cinema houses.  That was very cool!

            I use a shopping list app to outline my next grocery shopping trip.  I use another list app to track my to-do schedule.  The phone can deal with Microsoft Office files, keep me abreast of eBay transactions, hook me up with YouTube flicks, take high resolution photos and videos, and of course play MP3 music files.  This hand-held device has replaced my cell phone, PDA, iPod Touch, and as soon as a Farmville app is released for Android-based phones, probably my NetBook as well.  Of course, there is that little matter of the monthly cell phone voice and data plan billings.  Such is the cost of dealing with tech support people for whom English is a first language.

Nvidia’s Mr. Huang has said. "It is very clear now that mobile computing will be a completely disruptive force to all of computing."  I think he’s right.  It won’t be long before we look back at memories of today’s desktop computer boxes and laugh.