Arm presents Cortex-A78 and Cortex-X1 architecture for smartphones
Arm has unveiled its new microarchitecture for smartphone CPUs and GPUs. Cortex-A78 is the successor to last year’s Cortex-A77 and performs 20 percent better. Cortex-X1 is an even faster variant that should be up to 30 percent better at peak performance.
According to Arm, the performance gain of 20 percent with the same consumption as current socs based on Cortex-A77 designs. Manufacturers can also choose to make more economical socs that consume less, but perform the same as today’s fastest socs.
The performance gain is largely in the higher clock speed that is possible with the A78 cores. The new architecture is designed for a 5nm process and an optimal clock frequency of 3GHz. With the current A77 cores that are made at 7nm, that is 2.6GHz.
Along with the Cortex-A78 architecture, Arm also presents the Cortex-X1 variant. It is basically similar, but is optimized for the highest speeds and can be equipped with more cache. Manufacturers can combine X1 cores with A78 cores. For example, a soc could get three A78 cores and one X1 core. The fast X1 variant also seems suitable for ARM processors for laptops, for example for a successor to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx.
Arm also presents new GPUs, the Mali-G78 and -G68. It concerns the second generation of GPUs based on the Valhalla architecture, which was introduced last year. It is now possible to combine up to 24 Mali-G78 cores, well over the maximum number of Mali-G77 cores. According to Arm, the cores perform 25 percent better than the predecessors. The G68 variant is intended for cheaper socs and goes up to a maximum of 6 cores.
Arm does not make socs or processors itself, but is the designer of the microarchitecture that many manufacturers use. For example, Qualcomm, Samsung and MediaTek currently use the Cortex-A77 architecture in their fastest socs. It is obvious that the top models of those companies will use the Cortex-A78 cores next year, possibly in combination with Cortex-X1 cores.
Socs based on the new ARM architecture are expected to be announced at the end of this year. Chip makers such as Qualcomm and Samsung usually present their new socs a few months before it is actually in smartphones. It is likely that many smartphones released in 2021 will be equipped with socs that use the new architectures.
Hardware Info and AnandTech, among others, have published extensive articles on Arm’s new microarchitectures.