With ARM's new 64-bit announcement, what will WonderMedia do?

VIA WonderMedia chips were one of the first to be taken up and used by countless Chinese tablet manufacturers, when 7-inch tablets first hit the market. All the designs were fairly similar, and based on VIA WonderMedia WM8750 chips that include an ARM 11 core and are 1080p capable.

ARM have just announced new 64-bit Cortex-A50 series processor designs, licenses for which will be sold to companies like WonderMedia, with their intended usage to be in, not smartphones and tablets, but in servers.

"ARM dominates in smartphones and tablets, but is aiming to make its mark in the server market ruled by x86 chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. There is growing interest in ARM servers as an energy-efficient way to handle large numbers of Web requests such as in search or social networks. Dell and Hewlett-Packard already offer prototype ARM-based servers for testing to customers looking to deploy ARM servers to cut energy bills. However, Intel is also tweaking its low-power Atom processors to work in cloud servers and will release new Atom S-series chips for microservers later this year." - Source.

Will WonderMedia pursue this new avenue?

Linux to gain more foothold in mobile space?

As the year rolls on we're seeing more and more specs released for smartbooks. They're kind of like netbooks but even smaller and with crazy battery life - battery life like you're used to on a mobile phone in fact. I might have to change my blog name if they really can deliver what they promise. A lot of these smartbook designs use ARM processors and almost all of them run Linux. Both ARM and VIA joined the Linux foundation this month. Is the use of Linux on mobile devices about to increase with smartbooks?

"Two designers of low-power microprocessors – ARM and Via Technologies – this month joined the Linux Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to standardizing Linux operating system. Both companies said that see huge opportunities for Linux in mobile devices, but while ARM processors power the vast majority of mobile phones, chips from Via are only found in a few netbooks (which are sold only in China) and low-power desktop/embedded applications." - XBitLabs.