First, let’s review: since 2009, almost all smartphones have been equipped with ARM processors, with performance improvements reaching 100 times. Just think, in just seven years, 100 times, what an astonishing figure! Thanks to the significant performance improvements, new features, ultra-fast user interface responses, and immersive user experiences have become a reality, while power consumption remains unchanged, overcoming various challenges in mobile device design. Undoubtedly, this is an unprecedented achievement in the history of engineering technology.

High performance, new features, and optimized user experiences continuously drive rapid market growth. It is predicted that global smartphone sales will exceed 1.5 billion units in 2016.

Driven by consumer trends, smartphone design has become an important platform for future innovation in many aspects. Technologies like Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), ultra-high-definition visualization, object-based audio processing, and computer vision have all raised higher demands on system performance; coincidentally, smartphones have been pursuing slimmer designs in recent years, sacrificing some heat dissipation performance and raising higher requirements for power management. Moreover, as smartphone sizes have reached the limit of convenient operation, it means that increasing battery capacity cannot be achieved by enlarging the device size. To continue the brilliance of the smartphone industry over the past decade, further optimize the immersive user experience, and lead future innovations, we must continue to optimize performance and improve energy efficiency.

So far, ARM has released its new high-performance processor, the Cortex-A73. Following the launch of the Cortex-A72 processor last year, ARM has accelerated its pace of innovation and introduced the new Cortex-A73 processor this year; this processor will be fully applied to high-end smartphones in early 2017.

Thanks to exclusive design and optimization, the Cortex-A73 processor is tailor-made for mobile devices and other consumer electronics. The optimizations made for device performance and energy consumption with the Cortex-A73 processor are particularly exciting:

• Mobile power circuit performance is excellent, with a maximum frequency of up to 2.8GHz

• Power efficiency improved by 30%, ensuring the best user experience

• Built into the smallest ARMv8-A architecture to date

From the beginning of product development, the goal of the Cortex-A73 has been very clear: to create the most energy-efficient and high-performance ARM processor.

Cortex-A73: ARMv8-A High-Performance Processor

The Cortex-A73 processor fully supports the ARMv8-A architecture, and its feature set perfectly fits smartphones and other consumer electronics. The ARMv8-A architecture utilizes ARM TrustZone technology, NEON technology, visualization, and cryptographic design, and whether the system is 32-bit or 64-bit, the Cortex-A73 can support the widest range of mobile applications and middleware ecosystems (the development and optimization of mobile software is primarily based on the ARM architecture).

The Cortex-A73 processor is equipped with a 128-bit AMBA 4 ACE interface, whether for high-efficiency Cortex-A53 used in high-end designs or for the new ultra-high-efficiency Cortex-A35 used in mid-range and cost-sensitive designs, the ARM big.LITTLE system can achieve perfect compatibility.

Best Performance

The Cortex-A73 processor is tailored for the next generation of high-end smartphones. Using a 10nm process, the Cortex-A73 has continuously improved performance by 30% compared to the previous generation Cortex-A72 high-performance CPU. Even at a frequency of 2.8GHz, the Cortex-A73 remains powerful, perfectly matching sustained energy efficiency. As shown in the figure below, the Cortex-A73 can still operate normally at peak frequencies. Although actual operating frequency will be limited and seldom run at full frequency, this test still proves the powerful performance of the Cortex-A73.

Performance Optimization for Mobile Devices

The Cortex-A73 processor supports a 64kB instruction cache (based on state-of-the-art branch prediction algorithms) and high-performance instruction prefetching. The most important performance optimization lies in the data storage system, using advanced L1 and L2 data prefetching, and supporting complex pattern detection. Additionally, it also optimizes storage buffers for continuous data write streams and increases data cache to 64kB without introducing any timing impact.

Compared to the Cortex-A72, thanks to the aforementioned optimizations and enhancements, mobile application performance running at the same frequency on the Cortex-A73 can be improved by up to 10%. The chip design based on the Cortex-A73 further promotes frequency optimization compared to previous generations, which is a bold attempt under the premise of improving efficiency; in addition, compared to the Cortex-A72, the new Cortex-A73 processor improves performance by at least 15% in all storage workload application environments, including multi-application, operating system operations, and NEON complex computation execution.

Power Consumption Optimization

Although the power consumption of the Cortex-A73 is lower than that of the Cortex-A72, performance has been significantly improved. The Cortex-A73 has undergone significant upgrades in clock gating, power-optimized RAM architecture, and AArch32/AArch64 optimized resource sharing execution, further reducing power consumption.

Compared to the Cortex-A72, the Cortex-A73 saves at least 20% power in integer workloads; optimizations for floating-point operations and memory access workloads are even more pronounced. The reduction in power consumption significantly enhances the user experience and greatly extends battery life; meanwhile, power consumption optimization also saves more dynamic headroom for SoC, enhancing system and graphics processor performance, achieving better visual effects, improving frame rates, and laying the foundation for the addition of new features.

The Smallest High-End ARM CPU to Date

In addition to achieving extremely high sustained and peak performance, the most notable feature of the Cortex-A73 is its ability to deliver the outstanding performance of high-end ARMv8-A architecture processors in the smallest area, safeguarding the rising mid-range smartphone market; and achieving the best user experience at a mid-low cost. Thanks to technological innovations, compared to the Cortex-A15 using the ARMv7-A architecture, the new Cortex-A73 processor is smaller in area. Specifically, compared to the Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A72, the area of the Cortex-A73 is reduced by 70% and 42%, respectively. According to international standards, the core size of the Cortex-A73 is reduced by up to 25% compared to the Cortex-A72. In addition to playing a role in advanced technology nodes such as 16nm and 10nm processes, the Cortex-A73 processor also shines in the 28nm process technology node of the mass market, significantly enhancing the performance of mid-range mobile devices. The reduced footprint allows devices to accommodate more chips, integrate more features, or enhance the performance of other system IPs, and can also reduce the SoC and device costs of mid-range mobile devices.

Comprehensively Enhancing the Performance of Mid-Range Smartphones

Using big.LITTLE technology and CoreLink CCI, ARM provides excellent scalability for partners, achieving system optimization and creating differentiated products. What does this mean? The SoC design can adopt 1 or 2 big cores and 2 or 4 little cores, with performance and user experience that can even rival high-end designs. The unique L2 cache is reduced to 1MB, but still ensures sufficient cache to support big cores under actual high-performance workloads. Based on energy efficiency models, big.LITTLE software can be flexibly configured to meet the needs of different application environments.

Currently, big.LITTLE technology has been widely deployed in the mobile device market. The Cortex-A73 and Cortex-A53 will serve the next generation of smartphones, most commonly integrated in octa-core processors. In addition, the Cortex-A73 also lays the foundation for enhancing mid-range user experiences. For example, a six-core big.LITTLE configuration with a dual-core Cortex-A73 processor and a four-core Cortex-A53 or Cortex-A35 processor can achieve better performance than an octa-core Cortex-A53 in the same or smaller area. This topology is already very common and has been successfully applied to entry-level and mid-range devices. With the reduction in response times for applications such as web browsing and scrolling interfaces, the six-core Cortex-A73 improves performance by 30% compared to the octa-core Cortex-A53, with single-thread peak performance doubled, greatly enhancing user experience.

The ARM design team continuously enhances user experience and fully leverages the unique characteristics of ARM architecture mobile devices: equipped with the Cortex-A73 processor, achieving better performance and longer battery life with less power consumption and smaller space. Later this year and into 2017, the Cortex-A73 processor will gradually cover a series of consumer electronic devices such as our partners’ high-end smartphones, tablets, flip mobile devices, and digital TVs. Let’s wait and see and witness the emergence of these products!

Editor: Xinzhi News – Linzi

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