Last month, chip maker ARM said that several of its upcoming CPUs could be used to power netbooks. Now it looks like the company is moving forward with that plan. Laptop Magazine reports that ARM has partnered with Canonical to develop a version of Ubuntu Linux that’s optimized for ARM processors.

While most netbooks today are powered by CPUs from Intel or VIA, ARM has a strong track record of producing low power chips for cellphones, PDAs, and handheld devices. They aren’t exactly speed demons, but they do deliver long battery life. ARM says its next generation processors will allow a netbook to run all day on a single charge. Of course, there’s no mention of what kind of battery it will take to make that happen, but it’s still a pretty bold claim.

Right now almost every major laptop maker has a netbook on the market sporting a VIA C7-M or Intel Atom processor. But the ARM-specific version of Ubuntu isn’t due out until April, 2009, so it’s unlikely we’ll see an actual netbook using the ARM chip until the middle of next year at the earliest, which gives the company plenty of time to convince a big name computer maker to sign on.

Of course, by then, it might not be a three way processor race between Intel, VIA, and ARM. AMD is expected to announce its plans for the netbook space tomorrow.

Right now two chip makers dominate the netbook market: Intel and VIA. Almost every netbook on the market today uses an Intel Atom, Intel Celeron, or VIA C7-M CPU. Sure, there are a few outliers using the AMD Geode, or Loongson chips. But they’re in the minority.

Now it looks like chip maker ARM is hoping to give Intel and VIA some competition. The company says that its Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 chips will be used in upcoming netbooks. ARM processors are typically found in cellphones and PDAs, but ARM believes its newest chips will be powerful enough to run the kind of programs you’d expect to run on a low power ultraportable laptop.

The next generation ARM Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 processors are capable of “gigahertz speeds,” which makes them a bit faster than current ARM chips.

The company is apparently already working with some netbook makers, but isn’t ready to name names.

via Engadget