Xscale Processor Explained

This was originially posted by reddragon on 6-09-2003 at PocketPCPassion.com

The Samsung chip is based on V4 of the Arm tech, this is the same as the StrongARM from Intel. Xscale is based on V5 of the Arm tech both from www.arm.com. Samsung has taken the V4 chip put it into a .13u process and put the ROM and main memory with the processor, so it’s an all in one chip design. Intel’s strongARM was a .32u process which caused it to draw more power. The Samsung chip will be faster than the old StrongARM chips and run with less power, but it will have none of the new code which is in the V5 Arm tech, so some of the new code in PPC2003 will not be taken advantage of due to the lack of processing capability. This is however not a bad thing as this is a beefier version of the V4 Arm chip. Only time will tell if it does pan out, so don’t make any judgments yet.