5 ms·

In regard to the A55 and the A510, can anyone explain the design goals of these? Do they refine the A53 as a "small" CPU? Or are they larger more featureful CPU

In regard to the A55 and the A510, can anyone explain the design goals of these? Do they refine the A53 as a "small" CPU? Or are they larger more featureful CPUs?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Findecanor 3y ago
n my impression, the later ones are all supposed to be successors of the previous but within about the same chip area. The A55 is basically a refined A53 with support for DynamIQ. The point of the A510 was support for ARMv9 with SVE2, but it is wider also because people expect faster processors. To amortise the cost of the larger back-end it lost 32-bit support and there's an option to make a cluster of two share the same FP/SIMD/SVE unit and L2 cache.
- realjhol 3y ago
  The A53 is a fantastic workhorse for all kinds of embedded workloads. I was worried bloat would creep into later models, while the tried and true A53 moves toward obsolescence. From what you're saying, it seems like they are trying not to get carried away with it.
  - zokier 3y ago
    There is also A34 if A510 gets too big for your tastes
- Findecanor 3y ago
  The ARM Cortex-A520 was announced yesterday. Apparently ARM realised that the A510 was too big, and removed an ALU unit (back to two like the A55). News: <https://www.anandtech.com/show/18871/arm-unveils-armv92-mobile-architecture-cortex-x4-a720-and-a520-64bit-exclusive/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/18871/arm-unveils-armv92-mobi...> Discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36109916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36109916>
adrian_b 3y ago
The main purpose of Cortex-A55 and Cortex-A510 is to implement additional instructions over those of Cortex-A53, respectively Armv8.2-A and Armv9.0-A. This is necessary to make them ISA-compatible with the big cores and medium-size cores with which they are intended to be paired. Besides the main goal of implementing improved ISA's, they take advantage of the fact that since the time of Cortex-A53 the cost of transistors has diminished a lot and they implement various micro-architectural enhancements that result in a decently greater performance at identical clock frequency, while keeping similar area and power consumption ratios between the small cores like A510 and the medium-size cores like A710, like they are since the first Big.little ARM cores (Cortex-A15 paired with Cortex-A7). ARM has always avoided to publish any precise numbers for the design goals of the little cores, but it seems that they are usually designed to use an area of about 25% of the area of the medium-size cores and to have a power consumption around 0.5 W per core.

In regard to the A55 and the A510, can anyone explain the design goals of these? Do they refine the A53 as a "small" CPU? Or are they larger more featureful CPUs?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Findecanor 3y ago

n my impression, the later ones are all supposed to be successors of the previous but within about the same chip area. The A55 is basically a refined A53 with support for DynamIQ. The point of the A510 was support for ARMv9 with SVE2, but it is wider also because people expect faster processors. To amortise the cost of the larger back-end it lost 32-bit support and there's an option to make a cluster of two share the same FP/SIMD/SVE unit and L2 cache.

realjhol 3y ago
The A53 is a fantastic workhorse for all kinds of embedded workloads. I was worried bloat would creep into later models, while the tried and true A53 moves toward obsolescence. From what you're saying, it seems like they are trying not to get carried away with it.
- zokier 3y ago
  There is also A34 if A510 gets too big for your tastes
Findecanor 3y ago
The ARM Cortex-A520 was announced yesterday. Apparently ARM realised that the A510 was too big, and removed an ALU unit (back to two like the A55). News: <https://www.anandtech.com/show/18871/arm-unveils-armv92-mobile-architecture-cortex-x4-a720-and-a520-64bit-exclusive/4 https://www.anandtech.com/show/18871/arm-unveils-armv92-mobi...> Discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36109916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36109916>

adrian_b 3y ago

The main purpose of Cortex-A55 and Cortex-A510 is to implement additional instructions over those of Cortex-A53, respectively Armv8.2-A and Armv9.0-A. This is necessary to make them ISA-compatible with the big cores and medium-size cores with which they are intended to be paired. Besides the main goal of implementing improved ISA's, they take advantage of the fact that since the time of Cortex-A53 the cost of transistors has diminished a lot and they implement various micro-architectural enhancements that result in a decently greater performance at identical clock frequency, while keeping similar area and power consumption ratios between the small cores like A510 and the medium-size cores like A710, like they are since the first Big.little ARM cores (Cortex-A15 paired with Cortex-A7). ARM has always avoided to publish any precise numbers for the design goals of the little cores, but it seems that they are usually designed to use an area of about 25% of the area of the medium-size cores and to have a power consumption around 0.5 W per core.