Analyst believe that ARM processors will overtake Intel Atom processors in the netbook and tablet market by end of 2012, signs of which have already started appearing with success of devices like iPad. This has made companies like Samsung who have traditionally used Intel Atom processor to focus on development of ARM processors for their netbook lineup.

A leaked roadmap from Samsung shows that the company is working on number of ARM based processors and netbooks based on these processors should come to the market by end of this year. The first ARM processor that Samsung will use in their netbook will be 1GHz Cortex A8 chip that the company introduced last year and started shipping in Q1 2010. The netbooks will combine ARM processor made by Samsung with Google Chrome OS or Ubuntu OS.

After the initial launch of Cortex A8 processor this year, Samsung will focus on next generation ARM Cortex A9 and Cortex A5 chip architectures. Samsung plans to ship the following ARM based chips in coming years:

Like Samsung other companies are also planning to ship dual-core Cortex A9 chips by end of this year. These new processors should bring Intel Atom like performance to ARM chip, but with 1/10 the power requirement.
[Via EE Times]