The report also says that there will be a much wider array of processors powering future netbooks, Intel currently accounts for 90 percent of netbooks. It expects VIA to become more prominent as well as ARM-based chips from the likes of Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Freescale.

“This is not going to be just another Wintel platform. But the compatibility and driver support [for existing PC applications and peripherals] has to be there,” said Tony Massimini, Semico’s chief of technology.

Growth for the ARM-based players will get a step-up through smartphones to prove their viability in netbooks and smartbooks. “It’s a pretty level playing field in terms of the [chip-level] products,” he said. Massimini also expects netbooks will cannibalise notebooks less and less, as netbooks attract new customers such as first-time PC users. “The erosion of the low end of notebooks may offer Intel an opportunity to get rid of older obsolete notebook processors sooner,” he said.

Via EETimes.

“We look at ARM quite a bit. The mini category is one that plays closely to ARM,” said Todd Bradley who oversees the PC unit. ARM produces chip designs and then licenses them to other companies such as Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Freescale. These chips are found in many mobile phones, iPods, video-game consoles and even cameras.

Companies such as Acer and Asustek are already rumoured to be working on Snapdragon products. Qualcomm hasn’t said whether the products are netbooks or smaller mobile devices. I would imagine that HP are looking to compliment their existing lines with these new chips are perhaps to enter the smartbook segment themselves.

One issue that engineers have encountered is that Adobe Flash does not yet run natively on the ARM processor. The ARM platforms support for web video will be critical to its success. ARM and Adobe did announce that it will deliver a version of Flash 10 optimised for ARM devices at some point during 2009, although nothing has materialised so far. Another problem is that a number of web video sites are moving from Flash to the H.264 codec. Whilst ARM does support the codec, significant work will be required on the wrapper to make sure H.264 web videos can be played smoothly.

To compound these issues, the first generation of ARM-based netbooks may face hardware limits as they look to play video in screen sizes varying from 7-inch to 12-inches. “The baseline expectation for video is 30 frames/second, and at that rate every ARM device has different resolutions it can support on different size displays,” said Gregor Berkowitz, president of Moto Development Group, a contract design company working with three clients on ARM/Linux netbooks. “As screens get bigger, we’re pushing the top end of the ARM performance,” he added.

This is only expected to be a short-term hiccup however as chips launched by Qualcomm, Texas Instrument, Nvidia and Freescale will include video acceleration hardware. “Units coming this fall will have a risk of being slightly underpowered, though they could have a good user experience,” said Berkowitz. “The parts coming next year will eliminate that problem and make platforms very impressive,” he added.

Another important issue that engineers are facing is that a number of Linux-variants available for ARM do not support any standard for how they run applications. This is as each has a slightly different mix of software components. In addition with a range of different hardware configurations, an application that runs well on one netbook may crash on another.

Neither of these issues will be completely resolved before these netbooks begin hitting the market this fall according to Berkowitz. However, on a happier note, an ARM/Linux netbook could cut 60 percent of the cost compared to their x86/Windows peers. Success isn’t guaranteed despite the cheaper cost. Berkowitz predicted several netbook vendors will release models using new Freescale, Nvidia, Qualcomm and TI chips by the end of the year.

Via EE Times.