But he notes that companies like Cavium, Applied Micro Circuits, Texas Instruments, LSI and Fairchild have all talked publicly about using ARM processors in networking infrastructure.

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According to Holzle, things that were hard to do on processors embedded in a networking box become much easier when they separately designed and merely communicated to the hardware using OpenFlow.

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On Tuesday Intel agreed to acquire Fulcrum Microsystems, a privately-held designer of processors used in data center networking gear sold by companies such as Arista.

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Linux 2.4 can support more processors, more memory, and faster networking and disk access all prerequisites for industrial-strength corporate use.

ECONOMIST: Computing

"Freescale is taking a leadership position in shaping the future of consumer electronics by enabling entirely new categories of smart mobile devices based on processors, " said Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of Freescale's Networking and Multimedia Group.

ENGADGET: ARM, Samsung, IBM, Freescale, TI and more join to form Linaro, speed rollout of Linux-based devices