"New Arm chips herald ‘Internet of things’"

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New processors from Arm Holdings use so little power they could allow a new generation of connected devices, from credit cards to light bulbs.

Tiny chips could mean even credit cards can be connected to the internet - By Matt Warman, Consumer Technology Editor   

The chips, just 1mm by 1mm and powered by tiny batteries, will drive the so-called ‘Internet of things’, Cambridge-based Arm Holdings hopes. It anticipates uses across lighting, motor cars and a range of other devices that use new sensors.

Many companies are investing machine-to-machine communications, but new processors are required

if they are not to consumer significantly more power. Arm's will sell for less than 20p each, it is expected, and last for years on a single charge. Some analysts expect 60 billion connected devices to be active by 2020.

Vint Cerf, one of the founders of the internet, has raised the prospect, for instance, of wine corks incorporating chips so they can alert owners to the best time for wine to be drunk, or raise the alarm if they are opened without the owner’s knowledge.

Tom R Halfhill, a senior analyst with The Linley Group, said that “Ubiquitous network connectivity is useful for almost everything - from adaptive room lighting and online video gaming to smart sensors and motor control. But it requires extremely low-cost, low-power processors that still can deliver good performance. The ARM Cortex-M0+ processor will be suitable for a broad range of industrial and consumer applications.”

The new, 32-bit Arm Cortex-M0+ processors use around one third of the energy of any 8- or 16-bit processor available today, while delivering significantly higher performance, the company claims.

Arm says it is ‘the world’s most energy efficient microprocessor’, and expects it to be used in sensors for medical, domestic and power control uses.

“Low power connectivity has the potential to enable a range of energy-saving and life-enhancing applications from sensors to wirelessly analyzs the performance and control of domestic or industrial buildings, to battery-operated body sensors wirelessly connected to health monitoring equipment,” the company said.

Arm Holdings does not make chips itself, but said early licensees of the new processor include Freescale and NXP Semiconductor.