NetBook Expert

Marvell had their booth as usual MWC this year at beautiful Barcelona, Spain. What they had with them seemed pretty ordinary till you realized what was really going on. They had a two-screen set up, one small and another a large HDTV. The small screen had a 3D game on it and the HDTV was displaying and HD Movie. And both of them were being fed by just one little box that was powered by the Armada chipset.

Armada from Marvell has the potential to completely change the way we look at Smartphones and netbooks it the future. This puppy has the power to drive up to four 2K by 2K displays all at the same time. If you think that is more than 1080p, you’re almost there — that is way more than 1080p. But there already are chips like this, right? Wrong. Because this one barely sips at the battery while doing all this. Armada can power a home theatre rig and a gaming rig all at the same time and still stay cool and satisfied with very little power.

At the heart of the Armada 618 SoC is an ARM A7 design chip, explaining its power efficiency. It is capable of working with Linux, Android and Windows Mobile but that is only because they are focussing on phones. Just imagine what this can do to a netbook!

Intel Atom is nowhere near this kind of power efficiency and it still can’t provide the kind of performance that the Armada 618 can do at less than that amount of power. It can finally bring HD video and gaming to your netbook and not in a 720p, 2D way. Its 3D rendering engine can render 45 million triangles per second, which is means killer game performance. If this replaces Atom, we will be living in a world of bliss (and addictive gaming on the go).