LG prepping a smartphone CPU of its own, grabs an ARM license

The megapixel race of yesterday is the smartphone processor race of today and it seems every one wants in. Today it's LG's turn to get all serious about CPUs as it just got the license to use the ARM Cortex processor and ARM Mali GPU.

The licenses include the architecture for the Cortex-A9 MPCore (used for the Tegra 2 dual-core processors) and the Cortex-A15 MPCore, which is said to be the multi-cored smartphone processor to rule them all next year. Also LG will get to use the ARM Mali-T604 graphics chip, which is the successor to the Mali GPU, used in the Samsung Galaxy S II.

The Cortex-A15 MPCore processor will be able to deliver clocks, ranging from 1GHz to 1.5GHz, single or dual-core. It can even go up to quad-core but this is listed as a no-go for smartphones in the specs sheet of the processor on the ARM website.

With these licenses LG will be able to make its own line of System-on-Chip's, much like Samsung did with the Exynos processor.

This is good news as it means that pretty soon in the future we'll have the choice between many different smartphones with different CPUs. Today there are a slew Android-powered phones and tablets, all of which feature either the Snapdragon or the Tegra 2 chipsets.

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