PC World was chatting to ARM execs at Computex in Taipei and claimed that the company had overhauled the way it designs low-power Cortex-M chips that go into IoT devices.

The restructured design could almost double battery life, ARM executives said.

Jeff Chu, director of marketing at ARM said that the battery life of a connected hearing aid could more than double with chips based on the new design.

A smart lightbulb would last a lot longer on a battery charge with new chips based on the design and the smart bulb could have solar cells to refresh the battery, and the chip's lower power consumption could help the battery last for years.

The restructured Cortex-M also supports a new Bluetooth 4.2 radio called Cordio, which has a memory subsystem that will enable faster exchange of data between components. Additionally, a wide range of sensors can be applied to the chips.

With the redesign, ARM is also trying to speed up the development of chips for IoT devices, which could number more than 50 billion by 2020