ARM is trying to push its latest Cortex-A9 as an alternative to Intel's Atom. According to a few reports around the net ARM is saying that the new Dual Core A9 can not only outperform the Atom N270 but can do so using less power.

This is an interesting statement as it is a comparison to a year old CPU and not to Intel's latest Dual Core Atom N330 that should be out very soon.

It also fails to mention that the Intel Atom is a full x86 CPU and can run any OS designed for it including XP, Vista and Windows 7. The ARM Cortex-A9 can only run Windows CE, or some form of mobile Linux like Android or Chrome OS.

Still it does show off that the ARM CPU can do more than power smartphones, PMPs and MIDs. Now if they can only get MS to code Windows 7 to run on the ARM you might see it actually go somewhere.