Could ARM's Cortex A9 Defeat x86 CPUs?

Performancewise, the new Cortex-A9 is certainly no slouch with an estimated Coremark score of around 10,500 (for the 2GHz model) which makes it more powerful than a 3GHz Intel Xeon 5160 while consuming a fraction of the power. 

Even the power optimised version which runs at 800MHz is as fast as an Intel Core 2 Duo clocked at 1.2GHz with a Coremark score approaching 4000 points. Given that the A9 can be scaled speedwise even further, the next generation Cortex could be even more powerful.

Although the chips are not compatible with desktop based Windows, nothing would prevent one of ARM's partners to come up with a hardware-based virtualised environment like Wine or using a solution like Win4Lin.

Interestingly, Microsoft is bound to release Windows 7 Mobile next year, just in time for the next generation Cortex A9 MP Core to debut on future smartphones. Amongst the other rival operating systems, Chrome OS, is set to be the more interesting of the bunch.

But there are a few issues that ARM needs to iron out. First, it needs to embark on a campaign to inform consumers (rather than B2B) about what it is, something similar to the Centrino or Intel Inside campaign. This can be done by enrolling its partners and creating a marketing fund.

Then there is the problem of delivery. Although many samples of non-mobile Cortex A8 have been announced, there are yet to reach a tipping point where they will flood the market a la Netbook. The problem is that Intel has the human resource to do just that, whereas ARM, which has only 1700 employees doesn't have the bandwidth to do that right now.