ARM based netbooks, called "smartbooks" are nearing their release.
This pink netbook on the left is manufactured by Pegatron, an ASUS ODM manufacturing company, and is based on the Freescale i.MX515 SoC, which features an ARM Cortex A8 core and what seems like a PowerVR sourced graphics core, similar to what is used on the iPhone. The rest of the specs are 512MB of DDR2 RAM, an 1024x600 8.9" screen and runs an SD card as storage. The OS on the SD card will actually be the most significant performance drop noticeable, as they don't provide a decent random read and random write speed in current offers.
The smartbook runs Ubuntu Linux 9.04 and performance is acceptable for a device expected to cost around $200 that will also run on up to 8 hours on a 2-cell battery - around a third of what's used on Atom based netbooks with similar battery life. Adobe Flash performance is lacking but that should be fixed for the final release of the ARM version of Flash.
The device weights just 850g, a lot less than comparable netbooks.
First prototypes of ARM smartbooks where shown in late February and Nvidia also plans to take a slice of this market with it's Tegra SoC.
Source: IT Pro
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