ARM’s big.LITTLE CPU configurations have been around for years, and until now the standard practice has been to have as many or more small cores as there are large cores. This is now changing with the introduction of new ARM designs.
The high-power Cortex-X4, medium Cortex-A720 and small Cortex-A520 were introduced today and will work in tandem to balance performance and efficiency. ARM also introduced DSU-120 which is what drives the DynamIQ Shared Unit system which allows different CPU cores to work together.
With DSU-120, chipset manufacturers can create designs with up to 14 CPU cores
Current high-end chipsets have 1+3+4 or 1+4+3 configurations. While DSU-120 for CPUs up to 14 cores, smartphones will likely stick to 8 in total. However, the standard configuration will probably change to 1+5+2.
The new Cortex-X4 will tackle single-threaded heavy tasks, promises 15% faster performance than the X3 for the same power (which itself ran 25% faster than the X2). For the same performance, the X4 can offer a massive 40% reduction in power consumption. But the X4 is built for speed, in fact, it’s the fastest CPU core ARM has ever designed and is expected to hit clock speeds of 3.4GHz.
The Cortex-A720 is optimized for efficiency even more than previous A700 cores. It is 20% more efficient than the A715, which itself was 20% more efficient than the A710. With five A720 cores, they’ll do most of the heavy lifting for multi-threaded workloads and do it efficiently.
Finally, the Cortex-A520 is still a tidy core. It is designed so that two cores can share execution units to take up as little silicon space as possible. The other design goal was to draw power, and the A520 is 22% more efficient than the A510. On higher-end chipsets these will likely focus on background tasks.
The Cortex-A720 is optimized for efficiency
A new chipset with X4, A720 and A520 cores in a 1+5+2 configuration will offer a 27% increase in Geekbench 6 multi-thread test compared to a current 1+3+4 X3, A716, A510 CPU during the running at the same frequency with the same amount of cache (i.e. before the node benefits of a new chip are accounted for).
Note that none of these cores support the older 32-bit ARM instruction set – software running on these will be optimized for ARMv9. All companies that have yet to support 32-bit can use the Cortex-A710 core.
ARM also unveiled the second generation Immortalis GPU, the G720, for flagship devices. For high-end and mid-range chips, there are the new Mali-G720 and Mali-G620. The three GPUs debut a new architecture known simply as “5th Gen.”
The main change of this generation is the Deferred Vertex Shading pipeline. This change reduces the load on memory with a 33% reduction in bandwidth. Genshin Impact26% up Fortnite and 41% up Elven ruinsan Epic Games demo made to showcase the Unreal Engine.
The reduced memory load also reduces power consumption and heat, the game can be absorbed by the GPU. Overall, the fifth generation architecture can deliver on average 15% higher peak performance and 15% higher performance per watt.
Immortalis-G720 improves support for ray tracing. ARM is working in collaboration with Tencent Games and MediaTek to develop Smart Global Illumination (SmartGI) as an industry standard.
Immortalis-G720 GPUs will feature up to 10 cores, Mali-G720 can be configured with anywhere from 6 to 9 cores, Mali-G620 will come with up to 5 cores, depending on what the chipset designer has planned .
ARM’s new CPU and GPU designs are expected to arrive later this year and early 2024. Interestingly, the press release contains quotes from TSMC and Samsung, but also from Intel Foundry Services, which said that ” the combination of Intel’s cutting-edge 18A technology with ARM’s latest and most powerful CPU core, the Cortex-X4, will create opportunities for companies looking to design the next generation of innovative mobile SoCs.”A third player in the foundry space it can drive innovation forward and lower prices.
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