OLPC XO-1.75, ARM Powered OLPC XO Laptop is faster than x86! (Video) ( Marvell Armada 610 CPU )

OLPC CTO Edward J. McNierney gives us an overview of the ARM Marvell Armada 610 version of OLPC XO Laptop, XO 1.75, to be released soon, being optimized now in Taiwan, it provides for a sub 2 Watt One Laptop Per Child XO Laptop. One Laptop Per Child created the Netbook market, now they will push the PC/Laptop industry towards ARM support for lower power consumption and lower prices through increased industry competition and optimized SoC designs. The $100 Laptop is nearer. Marvell’s 610 is now one of the ARM SoC platforms that is now powerful enough to power a full desktop/laptop system.

Interesting, but the reality is that, ARM has a long way to go before it catches up with the power and speed of the current x86 processors. And then, there's the matter of redesigning and reprogramming OSes and applications to be fully supported on the ARM platform. It may be 2 years or more before ARM catches up with the current x86 platform, but by then, the x86 platform will have been updated to be even more powerful and speedier.

From ZDNet:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/computers/ces-2011-nvidia-is-developing-its-first-cpu/4668

It is an ambitious strategy, but it faces some big challenges. First, while ARM processors have been growing significantly more powerful, they still can’t touch the fastest x86 processors. Second, many of the client and server applications used by organizations and individuals would need to be rewritten to run on ARM-based computers.

A number of major operating systems including Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, RIM’s BlackBerry and Windows CE already run on ARM-based processors, but there’s one big omission: the full version of Windows. Huang noted that there are rumors that Microsoft could announce that Windows 8 will support ARM, as well as x86, as soon as today. If that does happen, it would go a long way towards validating Nvidia’s strategy.

The new OLPC system looks like a step ahead for them. But, "One Laptop Per Child created the Netbook market" happened right after the ASUS Eee PC 701, while the OLPC itself was trapped in waffleville. It took a successful commercial product to get them off the pot.

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