At the heart of nearly every smartphone out there is at least one ARM processor core. The various chipsets powering Android smartphones are based on ARM Cortex cores.
Recently, ARM has announced a new series of Cortex processor cores, the ARM Cortex-A72. ARM has stated that the A72 will enable nominal CPU frequencies of as high as 2.5GHz, and will have an integrated Mali-T880 GPU. They will also be optimizing it for 16-nm FinFET die manufacturing.
The core designs will be licensed to chipset companies for implementation. ARM is targeting 2016 for shipment of the developed products with the A72s in use.
The relatively new (but strong) player, MediaTek, uses the ARM Cortex cores along with their integrated GPUs. The GPU upgrade in the A72 is very good news for them, as it will certainly take graphics rendering to a whole new level.
In the current MT6732 chipset, the Mali T760 GPU is already killing benchmark tests. Meanwhile, the Mali-T880 is claimed to deliver 1.8x better performance than the T760. Additionally, the GPU is supposed to be the most energy efficient, providing 40% savings in power consumption as compared with existing tech.
ARM’s vision with the A72 is to fit the cores into the prospective 4K graphics era, targeting excellent mobile gaming experience and the capability of connecting to the Internet of Things. The core is said to be capable of 4K video recording at 120fps, which is far ahead of the current 1080p recording capabilities of chipsets.
In the current generation of smartphones, the mid to high range chipsets have the ARM Cortex-A53 cores utilizing either the 32-bit or 64-bit architecture. Chipsets using those cores are clocked at frequencies of 1.4 GHz as seen in MediaTek’s MT6732s or up to 1.7GHz for Snapdragon 610s, while the higher range chipsets make use of the A57 cores in tandem with the A53s to deliver power SoCs.
The new CPU is claimed to offer up to 75% energy savings as compared with the A15 cores from 2014. Furthermore, the performance of the CPU will portray a 3.5x improvement from the A15s and around 1.8x improvement from the A57s, which are the “big” guys in Qualcomm’s SD810 octacore chipset.
This development certainly makes for a very promising and exciting future for smartphones in the coming year.
Leave a Reply