ARM / Intel race getting more interesting

Last week, ARM began releasing details of its new "MPCore" processor dubbed Cortex-A15. The announcement contains very little detail but it is obvious that ARM is driving hard into higher performance (and, yes, inevitably higher power) applications. As Jon Stokes points out, this is not a replacement for the Cortex-A8 or Cortex-A9 but a new entry at the top end of the line up. The increased ECC coverage and the multi-socket capability definitely point to use in server environments or at least in more demanding media applications (e.g. automotive nav/media, DTV) but, given the pace of innovation in mobile devices, I'm not willing to count out the possibility of needing an 8-core 2.5GHz processor in my pocket in a few years.