The Cortex-A9 processor, released on Wednesday by the British firm ARM Holdings, boasts an increased application performance, thanks to its ability of reaching a clock speed of up to 2GHz -- and possibly even beyond!

According to ARM claims, the new dual-core Cortex-A9 processor consumes only about 1.9 watts of power while running 2GHz. The processor not only surpasses the
1GHz speed of most of the ARM-based chips in the market, but also delivers a notably better performance than Intel's Atom N270 netbook chip that operates at 1.6GHz.

ARM said that with the new processor, earlier called Osprey, it intends to depict that its processors, mostly known for low power consumption, are scalable; and that the company can provide the performance required for running the supposedly demanding applications like multimedia.

Noting that ARM's processors are already found in countless mobile devices, and are working their way into netbooks, Nandan Nayampally - ARM's director of CPU marketing - said that the new chip design will initially solicit smartphones using 200-300 milliwatts power.

Commenting on the idea underlying the release of the high-performing Cortex-A9, which will support SMP operating systems and offer up to 8MB L2 cache memory, Nayampally added: "It's just changing the perception of ARM as being a low-cost, low-power processor not associated with performance. We're actually providing performance level very attractive to a large suite of applications."