There were several major CPU-related announcements for netbooks released over the past few days, along with some more information about dual-core Atoms and how they might potentially fare in netbooks.
ARM is going to use the ARMv7 architecture to make ARM Cortex-A8 and A9-based netbooks and MIDS. They are going to work with Canonical on an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution specifically for these systems. They are known for being able to handle some forms of high-definition video as well as long battery life in existing PDAs / smart phones. LAPTOP Magazine reports that they are interested in 8.9″ and 10.2″ netbooks. We’ll see more about this towards April of 2009 as the ARM Ubuntu distribution is released, as well as more information. (Press Release via LAPTOP Magazine
Next up, PC Pro has benchmarked the dual-core Atom 330, and even though it was on a desktop form factor, they made comparisons to single-core Atoms on netbooks (since some of the involved factors, including the chipset, were identical).