Arm chips for mobile devices find a place in commercial laptops

From InfoWorld: After comfortably residing for years in mobile devices like cell phones, chips based on the Arm design are finding their way into commercial laptops.

However, Arm processors could be relegated to co-processor status alongside Intel CPUs in commercial laptops unless the chips are able to run full-featured, Windows-based PC applications, analysts said.

Though Arm can run multiple flavors of Linux and the Windows Embedded CE platform, Microsoft has said its upcoming Windows 7 OS would not support the Arm architecture. Microsoft said Arm is suited for specialized devices like smartphones and e-readers. As such, only the mobile version of Windows has been ported to the Arm architecture.

Nevertheless, Dell's move on Tuesday to use Arm chips in its latest business offering, the Latitude Z, raises the possibility of the processor architecture being used in more laptops.The Arm processor is a secondary CPU that sits alongside an Intel low-voltage CPU intended to run Windows-based applications. Dell is also offering Arm CPUs as an option with its ultraportable Latitude E4300 and E4200 business laptops.

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