5 ms·

ARM unveils next-gen, 2.5GHz Cortex-A15 processor

45 points by logicalstack 16y ago

nl 16y ago
Arstechnica has a great write up: http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/arms-eagle-has-landed-meet-the-a15.ars http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/arms-eagle-has-... Interestingly, Ars says it's a laptop and server chip, not really aimed at ARM's traditional embedded market.
- paulitex 16y ago
  Tablets, likely, laptops very unlikely - neither Windows or OSX run on ARM (which together make up over 98% of laptop OS market share http://gorumors.com/crunchies/operating-system-market-share/ http://gorumors.com/crunchies/operating-system-market-share/). I suppose Windows 8 and OSX 10.7 could be out before 2012 and ported, but I wouldn't bet on it....
  - j23tom 16y ago
    who cares about win and macos - it will run on linux.
  - InclinedPlane 16y ago
    Chrome OS? iOS? Android?
  - jsz0 16y ago
    Is there any good reason to sacrifice any significant amount of battery life for performance in a tablet class device at this point? I think consumers will find the happy medium of device battery life (full day for SmartPhones, couple of days for tablets) and CPU evolution will need to be more incremental to meet those demands.
    - sprout 16y ago
      Honestly, I don't need a computer more powerful than my Motorola Droid. If someone could make one of those that had the battery life of a feature phone, I'd take my Moto Droid any day of the week. (Actually, I don't see why you think that tablets should have multi-day life expectancies. I'm almost always using them in areas where there are plugs. My phone on the other hand almost never leaves my pocket. )
      - rakkhi 16y ago
        "Honestly, I don't need a computer more powerful than my Motorola Droid. " How can more performace ever be a bad thing, things you have not even imagined or been invented yet to do on a mobile because the performance is not there yet. E.g. things that I know: 3D video recording and photography, great performance augmented reality, instant search with social network and location data built it, HDR video recording. I don't even know what I don't know... And its not even multiday - I would love my iPhone to be double the performance and 8 hours non stop video play. That would be awesome, nothing more frustrating than being stuck on a train with a mobile that has run out of battery, only so long you can stare at the hot chicks :)
        sprout 16y ago
        A mobile is a tool. It accomplishes a set of tasks for me. I don't want to be bothered with constantly worrying about my power supply in search of hypothetical benefits. I want a music player / messenger / Internet browser that I can plug into an outlet at my leisure. Also, instant search with location / social data already works on my Motorola Droid. In fact, certain parts of it work worse on Froyo than they did on the previous release. (Example: I used to be able to use voice search to say "Navigate to John Smith" and if I had a contact named John Smith with address information, it opened up navigation and took me there. Hopelessly broken on Froyo, and there's nowhere to submit a bug report because voice search and maps are both closed-source.) But I guess mostly what I'm saying is that there are no hardware problems, it's all cloud data, cloud computing, and the main bottleneck is network, not CPU. Even so, the bottlenecks don't cause enough trouble that I'm willing to sacrifice battery to get rid of them.
  - patrickaljord 16y ago
    ChromeOS does though.
  - msh 16y ago
    Android/ChromeOS smartbooks/laptops would be a good bet on the target market for the laptops comment.
    - pietrofmaggi 16y ago
      For laptops you have to remember that, at this time, the biggest power consumption (for screens bigger that 10-12") is the LCD (mainly his backlight). So, what you're gaining putting in an high-end ARM against a "low-power" X86 is a portion of the total power consumption of the laptop. Why choose ARM then? When the screen real estate is smaller than 10" or the size of the CPU+Logic Chip is important (take a look at the size of an Apple A4 against an Atom+Chipset). And when you don't have a large codebase already available. The new AppleTV is a good example of this, the usage of the A4 is a no-brainer whatever Intel CEO says: http://www.businessinsider.com/intel-ceo-steve-jobs-took-a-step-backward-with-new-apple-tv-2010-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/intel-ceo-steve-jobs-took-a-s...
      - msh 16y ago
        s/laptops/netbooks as atom competitor. It could allso give you better allways on with a real laptop where you dont need to hibernate to save power.
- pietrofmaggi 16y ago
  ARM has a different take on this, positioning this MCU (int the 1 GHz – 1.5 GHz single or dual-core configurations) even for Smartphone and Mobile Computing: http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a15.php http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a15.p... (under performance tab). Then you scale up to 1.5GHz – 2.5 GHz quad-core, octo-core or larger configurations but this are obviously for other class of devices.
noelwelsh 16y ago
Intel should be worried. With support for 1TB of memory this seems like the first ARM chip that can really make a dent in the server market. I expect the big players with significant energy bills to be very interested in this.
- modeless 16y ago
  Supporting 1 TB of memory on a 32-bit system reminds me of the bad old days of DOS extended memory. Are there any plans for a 64-bit ARM chip?
  - noelwelsh 16y ago
    I don't know, but it's the obvious next step. There are certainly rumours that ARM is going to go that way. I'm not plugged in to the chip manufacturer gossip network but my guess is that ARM doesn't want to start an open fight with Intel before they have 1) Tested the server market. A 32-bit chip has its limitations, but for things like caches that are IO limited it is fine, and 2) Got their 64-bit architecture nailed down. I expect they don't want to give Intel a long lead time to respond.
    - mansr 16y ago
      When power is a major concern, and that is the applications ARM is targeting, using a 64-bit system when 32-bit would suffice is counter-productive. A 64-bit CPU naturally requires more transistors and thus more power than a 32-bit one. There are other overheads (in OS etc) associated with a 64-bit system. The difference may not be great, but for many applications it is a cost with no reward. Comparing to MIPS, they have had a 64-bit ISA variant for a very long time, yet all the recent cores have been 32-bit as this is all their current target markets require. A full 64-bit system is really required only for HPC-type applications, a domain currently owned by Intel and IBM. If ARM are interested in eating into this market segment, it is most likely a very long-term goal, and obtaining a foothold in the 32-bit server space would serve as a first step in that direction.
      - 16y ago
listic 16y ago
Where does one get a datasheet for one of those? I was looking for the datasheet for previous models, but all I could find were press releases.
- wmf 16y ago
  http://arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a9.php http://arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a9.php There's quite a bit of documentation under the Resources tab. A15 docs won't be released until later.
  - listic 16y ago
    Thanks. Now I remember that it's Qualcomm's chips that I couldn't get datasheets for: MSM8660: Dual Core, 1.2 GHz, Q2 2010 (http://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2010/06/01/qualcomm-ships-first-dual-cpu-snapdragon-chipset http://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2010/06/01/qualcomm-sh...) QSD8672: Dual Core, 1.5 GHz, Q4 2010

45 points by logicalstack 16y ago

nl 16y ago

Arstechnica has a great write up: http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/arms-eagle-has-landed-meet-the-a15.ars http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/09/arms-eagle-has-... Interestingly, Ars says it's a laptop and server chip, not really aimed at ARM's traditional embedded market.

paulitex 16y ago
Tablets, likely, laptops very unlikely - neither Windows or OSX run on ARM (which together make up over 98% of laptop OS market share http://gorumors.com/crunchies/operating-system-market-share/ http://gorumors.com/crunchies/operating-system-market-share/). I suppose Windows 8 and OSX 10.7 could be out before 2012 and ported, but I wouldn't bet on it....
- j23tom 16y ago
  who cares about win and macos - it will run on linux.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Chrome OS? iOS? Android?
- jsz0 16y ago
  Is there any good reason to sacrifice any significant amount of battery life for performance in a tablet class device at this point? I think consumers will find the happy medium of device battery life (full day for SmartPhones, couple of days for tablets) and CPU evolution will need to be more incremental to meet those demands.
  - sprout 16y ago
    Honestly, I don't need a computer more powerful than my Motorola Droid. If someone could make one of those that had the battery life of a feature phone, I'd take my Moto Droid any day of the week. (Actually, I don't see why you think that tablets should have multi-day life expectancies. I'm almost always using them in areas where there are plugs. My phone on the other hand almost never leaves my pocket. )
    - rakkhi 16y ago
      "Honestly, I don't need a computer more powerful than my Motorola Droid. " How can more performace ever be a bad thing, things you have not even imagined or been invented yet to do on a mobile because the performance is not there yet. E.g. things that I know: 3D video recording and photography, great performance augmented reality, instant search with social network and location data built it, HDR video recording. I don't even know what I don't know... And its not even multiday - I would love my iPhone to be double the performance and 8 hours non stop video play. That would be awesome, nothing more frustrating than being stuck on a train with a mobile that has run out of battery, only so long you can stare at the hot chicks :)
      - sprout 16y ago
        A mobile is a tool. It accomplishes a set of tasks for me. I don't want to be bothered with constantly worrying about my power supply in search of hypothetical benefits. I want a music player / messenger / Internet browser that I can plug into an outlet at my leisure. Also, instant search with location / social data already works on my Motorola Droid. In fact, certain parts of it work worse on Froyo than they did on the previous release. (Example: I used to be able to use voice search to say "Navigate to John Smith" and if I had a contact named John Smith with address information, it opened up navigation and took me there. Hopelessly broken on Froyo, and there's nowhere to submit a bug report because voice search and maps are both closed-source.) But I guess mostly what I'm saying is that there are no hardware problems, it's all cloud data, cloud computing, and the main bottleneck is network, not CPU. Even so, the bottlenecks don't cause enough trouble that I'm willing to sacrifice battery to get rid of them.
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  ChromeOS does though.
- msh 16y ago
  Android/ChromeOS smartbooks/laptops would be a good bet on the target market for the laptops comment.
  - pietrofmaggi 16y ago
    For laptops you have to remember that, at this time, the biggest power consumption (for screens bigger that 10-12") is the LCD (mainly his backlight). So, what you're gaining putting in an high-end ARM against a "low-power" X86 is a portion of the total power consumption of the laptop. Why choose ARM then? When the screen real estate is smaller than 10" or the size of the CPU+Logic Chip is important (take a look at the size of an Apple A4 against an Atom+Chipset). And when you don't have a large codebase already available. The new AppleTV is a good example of this, the usage of the A4 is a no-brainer whatever Intel CEO says: http://www.businessinsider.com/intel-ceo-steve-jobs-took-a-step-backward-with-new-apple-tv-2010-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/intel-ceo-steve-jobs-took-a-s...
    - msh 16y ago
      s/laptops/netbooks as atom competitor. It could allso give you better allways on with a real laptop where you dont need to hibernate to save power.
pietrofmaggi 16y ago
ARM has a different take on this, positioning this MCU (int the 1 GHz – 1.5 GHz single or dual-core configurations) even for Smartphone and Mobile Computing: http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a15.php http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a15.p... (under performance tab). Then you scale up to 1.5GHz – 2.5 GHz quad-core, octo-core or larger configurations but this are obviously for other class of devices.

noelwelsh 16y ago

Intel should be worried. With support for 1TB of memory this seems like the first ARM chip that can really make a dent in the server market. I expect the big players with significant energy bills to be very interested in this.

modeless 16y ago
Supporting 1 TB of memory on a 32-bit system reminds me of the bad old days of DOS extended memory. Are there any plans for a 64-bit ARM chip?
- noelwelsh 16y ago
  I don't know, but it's the obvious next step. There are certainly rumours that ARM is going to go that way. I'm not plugged in to the chip manufacturer gossip network but my guess is that ARM doesn't want to start an open fight with Intel before they have 1) Tested the server market. A 32-bit chip has its limitations, but for things like caches that are IO limited it is fine, and 2) Got their 64-bit architecture nailed down. I expect they don't want to give Intel a long lead time to respond.
  - mansr 16y ago
    When power is a major concern, and that is the applications ARM is targeting, using a 64-bit system when 32-bit would suffice is counter-productive. A 64-bit CPU naturally requires more transistors and thus more power than a 32-bit one. There are other overheads (in OS etc) associated with a 64-bit system. The difference may not be great, but for many applications it is a cost with no reward. Comparing to MIPS, they have had a 64-bit ISA variant for a very long time, yet all the recent cores have been 32-bit as this is all their current target markets require. A full 64-bit system is really required only for HPC-type applications, a domain currently owned by Intel and IBM. If ARM are interested in eating into this market segment, it is most likely a very long-term goal, and obtaining a foothold in the 32-bit server space would serve as a first step in that direction.
    - 16y ago

listic 16y ago

Where does one get a datasheet for one of those? I was looking for the datasheet for previous models, but all I could find were press releases.

wmf 16y ago
http://arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a9.php http://arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a9.php There's quite a bit of documentation under the Resources tab. A15 docs won't be released until later.
- listic 16y ago
  Thanks. Now I remember that it's Qualcomm's chips that I couldn't get datasheets for: MSM8660: Dual Core, 1.2 GHz, Q2 2010 (http://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2010/06/01/qualcomm-ships-first-dual-cpu-snapdragon-chipset http://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2010/06/01/qualcomm-sh...) QSD8672: Dual Core, 1.5 GHz, Q4 2010