1GHz Processor on the Mobile Phone

In August 2001, Intel announced its 1GHz desktop processor. It has gone a long way since then. This year, your mobile phone could be powered by a 1GHz processor too, according to an announcement by Marvell with its PXA168 CPU.The Marvell PXA168 processor is scalable beyond 1.0GHz and it’s only going to be a matter of time before we see media players and mobile phones running this processor (my guess is before 2009 ends).

Marvell PXA168 is based on a new innovative architecture that delivers the processing capabilities of an entry-level laptop to instant-on, digital consumer devicesby enabling full-featured web surfing, Internet widgets, multi-format video, Adobe Flash-based content playback, image processing, video conferencing and advanced graphical user interfaces (GUIs) – at consumer price points with ultra-low power for longer battery life {source}.

There are a lot of smartphones right now that sport fast processors — the Nokia 5800 has an ARM 11 369 MHz CPU, several HP iPaq and the O2 XDA has the Intel PXA272 416 MHz processor, the Xperia X1, HTC Touch HD and the upcoming Motorola A3100 has a Qualcomm 528 Mhz processor.

The fastest so far is the new Asus P565 that runs on Marvell TavorP 800 MHz. One gigahertz isn’t that far in the horizon and when those processors arrive, we could be looking at some serious computing power in mobile devices.