ARM has unveiled it’s new processor at ARM Developers' Conference in Santa Clara which is specifically designed to be used in mobile phones and other low power consuming devices. Titled the Cortex-A8 or just A8 for simplicity the chip can push towards 2,000 DIMPS (that’s basically 2 billion instructions per second to me and you according to the Dhrystone Benchmarks) whereas AMR’s current processor portfolio available for todays phones such as the ARM7 only delivers 130 DIMPS or if you own a so called smart phone then you could have a top of the range ARM11 which delivers up to 720 DIMPS.

What this means is that in the future when mobile manufacturers start using these chips the phone could deliver much higher quality video and audio, much better 3D graphics acceleration and wireless multiplayer capabilities for games. Not to mention the potential for far more complex applications that could be ran on devices with this chip in the future.

But before you get all excited about the vastly improved capabilities of your next mobile phone it’s worth mentioning that ARM Cortex-A8 will not be available in phones until 2008.