ARM's Cortex family will welcome three new additions in 2010, EETimes reports. Currently all we have are codenames to go on, but these will include 'Eagle,' which will be a high-performance Cortex A-class part, 'Heron,,' an embedded and real-time Cortex R-class chip, and 'Merlin,' a novel core for ARM's Cortex-M series.
"Lead licensing is in place on all of them. We are within about 18 months of finishing the designs," said Warren East, chief executive officer of ARM.
East went on to say that the three new processors are being designed to offer different, rather than better performance.
"In all three cases, they will sit alongside the existing products for some time to come," East added.
Even so, the Eagle core will sit above the Cortex-A9 as ARM's flagship processor in terms of performance. Expect to see Eagle in a variety of devices, including smartphones, mobile computing, digital televisions, and communications infrastructure applications.
