What does the future hold?
Either way, it's clear that Intel and ARM are going to increasingly be in direct competition with each other and the stakes are very high. Becoming the company behind the processor of choice in the smart device of the future promises almost limitless commercial rewards.
We asked Morris what advantages he thinks ARM currently has over Intel. "Right now power/performance," he said. "Also we can be a standard platform; we don't try to squeeze people into a box. Someone said to me recently that ARM is almost a force of nature."
Note Morris said "right now". ARM seems to be under no illusions about Intel's ability to compete and the incredibly transient nature of the industry. "Netbooks have only been in existence for 15-16 months," he said. "Whatever I say now may change in 4-5 months, but our partners are getting a lot of interest in lower cost, lower power systems and the current economic situation is contributing to that."
We persisted nonetheless and asked him what sort of new gadgets we can expect see running on ARM processors later this year. "I'm spending a lot of time on Computex," said Morris, indicating we should watch that space. "We're getting closer to seeing the mobile connected device of the future and I'm excited by the potential of the handset communicating with the PC."
It seems we might interact with our handsets using the traditional PC interface of monitor, keyboard and mouse, with the handset communicating and automatically syncing with a PC via technologies like wireless USB. That would be interesting. "The technology's there today, it's just assembling the pieces," concluded Morris.
