MacRumors ran an article today that the iSlate could be operating on an ARM Cortex A9 processor. This seems not to be based on leaks or any verified facts, but it certainly is an interesting speculation.

The A9 is a new successor to the A8 range of processors that for example power the iPhones. In fact around 98 percent of the more than a billion mobile phones sold each year use at least one ARM processor. The Cortex A9 represents the next generation which supports multi-core designs. The Cortex A9 multi-core processors are expected to scale beyond 2 GHz while drawing less than 0.25 W of power per CPU.

The biggest implication of this would be that the iSlate would not be able to run standard OSX or Windows (and its applications). However, several Linux distributions, including the Chrome OS, have been ported to the ARM platform. Also, the iPhone uses a ported OSX version.

Apple is believed to be one of a few unnamed large licensors that ARM mentioned in their Q3 2009 earnings.

Coincidentally, ARM showed earlier several protoypes of multi touch tablets. Here’s is a YouTube video of them:

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