At its annual ARM TechCon3 conference in Santa Clara, California, on Wednesday, Arm Holdings PLC announced a low-cost, powerful and energy-efficient microprocessor - Cortex-A5 - for smartphones and other fast-performance-centric devices. The microprocessor will likely be released to the over 600 manufacturing partners of ARM in December.

The newest processor, which will displace two ARM processors, will also enable the company to keep at bay any undesired incursions from a rival product - the Atom chip from Intel Corp.

Talking about the new Cortex A-5 microprocessor, an ARM marketing manager, Travis Lanier, said: "This is a very, very tiny processor. It will be many generations before the Atom can compete with it."

Going by the information forwarded by the Cambridge, England-based firm, the new Cortex-A5 processor will be equipped with one to four processor cores that can run at a speed of up to
1GHz. The highly efficient 40-nanometer design will enable the cores of the Cortex-A5 to run at nearly thrice the speed of each core in the low-end ARM9 product of the company.

In addition, the microprocessor will also support Neon multimedia technology, used for improved video performance.

With the help of the new Cortex A-5 microprocessor, ARM, whose designs have been used in 15 billion devices in the past few decades, expects to achieve the target of shipping an additional
15 billion devices in the next four-year period.