Fujitsu Semiconductor have announced a new range of products in their existing FM3 range of Cortex-M3 processors. The 54 new high-performance chips bring the total product range up to 160 products, covering a wide range of possible applications. These new processors include move the processing speed from 80MHz up to 144MHz, and include peripherals such as Ethernet and CAN, as well as new improvements such as zero wait state NOR flash for fast execution, and flexible power supplys from 2.7v to 5.5v, allowing for better integration into industrial and noisy environments.

For futher details, see here.

Texas Instruments have announced a new processor range in their Sitara family - the AM335x. These Cortex-A8 devices contain a familiar range of features, such as a 720MHz core, OpenGL 3D acceleration, Gigabit Ethernet and DDR 1/2/3 support. However the announcement of the $5USD pricing (in 100k quantities) will allow these processors to be used in a new range of cheap devices, bringing superior performance to a larger market segment.

Together with this announcement was the release of the new BeagleBone from TI. Similar to the BeagleBoard, this $89USD development kit sports one of the new AM335x processors, with an easy credit-card sized form factor.

Based on the support that the BeagleBoard and PandaBoard have received from the community, the BeagleBone looks to be an excellent addition, with a very nice price point.

For further details on the AM335x release see .

For further details on the BeagleBone release see .

ARM has today announced details of their new ARMv8 architecture. The key change from previous ARM systems is the inclusion of a new 64-bit instruction set, named AArch64, with the existing instruction set continuing on under the AArch32 name. Full details on the instruction sets is expected to be announced in 2012, with processors available publically in 2014.

For more details, see here.

ARM have announced their new Cortex-A7 MPCore processor. This is touted to provide 5 times the energy-efficiency of the Cortex-A8, while consuming one fifth the size. Just as the previous Cortex-M3 series has been effective at moving designers on from the exceptionally popular ARM7TDMI cores, the Cortex-A7 is targeted at the still popular ARM9 family. Using 28nm process technology, the Cortex-A7 occupies a mere 0.5mm² of realestate.

In addition to this, ARM have announced the 'Big.LITTLE' feature - a multi-core processor with different speed/functionality cores. This allows tasks to be migrated from a low-power core to a high power core on demand, giving a more optimal mix of performance versus power consumption.

For more details, see here.

Altera have announced a new integrated ARM Cortex-A9 multi-core CPU, with either a Cyclone V or Arria V FPGA. This combined package provides a range of peripherals attached to the Cortex-A9 CPU: 2 x Gbps Ethernet, DDR3 memory support, external memory controllers with DMA support (NAND, SPI, SDIO), along with a 128bit high speed interconnect to the FPGA core.

Volume pricing was targeted to start at $15, with the silicon available in the second half of 2012.

For further details, see here.