Smartphone and even smaller computers in the form of clever books and netbooks have increasingly begun to use ARM-based processors. The best known of the current situation is Qualcomm's Snapdragon micro CPU but also Nvidia's Tegra series based on the ARM structural design with the producer Marvell is another tough competitor with its ARMADA series of CPUs. Now that Marvell has raised the bar on the ARM market by announcing its first quad-core CPU.

Marvell's quad-core CPU is based on their ARMADA 500 and 600 architecture, which we quite recently reported. It is quite remarkable that Marvell now developed a quad model that works across 1GHz with sights set on the consumer and gaming market.

Exactly what is meant by these remains to be seen but we would almost call a quad core CPU for overkill in a cell phone, however, larger handheld devices or smart books may be close at hand.

So far, we know not when Marvell launching its new CPU and the market may well have changed by then.