Arm's Cortex-A76 CPU Unveiled: Taking Aim at the Top for 7nm
by Andrei Frumusanu on May 31, 2018 3:01 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Arm
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- SoCs
- Cortex-A76
Conclusion & Thoughts
The Cortex A76 presents itself a solid generational improvement for Arm. We’ve been waiting on a larger CPU microarchitecture for several years now, and while the A76 isn’t quite a performance monster to compete with Apple’s cores, it shows how important it is to have a balanced microarchitecture. This year all eyes were on Samsung and the M3 core, and unfortunately the performance increase came at a great cost of power and efficiency which ended up making the end-product rather uncompetitive. The A76 drives performance up but on every step of the way it still deeply focused on power efficiency which means we’ll get to see the best of both worlds in end products.
In general Arm promises a 35% performance improvement which is a significant generational uplift. Together with the fact that the A76 is targeted to be employed in 7nm designs is also a boost to the projected product.
I’m having some reservations in terms of the performance targets and if vendors will indeed release the SoC with quad-core clock rates of up to 3GHz – based on what I’ve heard from vendors that seems like a rather very optimistic target. Even then, a reduced clock frequency still brings significant benefits, and it’s especially on the efficiency side where Arm should be lauded for continuing to place great focus on.
Whether my projections are correct or not is something we’ll have to see in actual products, but fact is that we *will* see significant efficiency benefits in the next generation of SoCs which should bring both an notable performance improvement as well as battery life improvement to the user. Arm’s focus here on the user experience seems to be exemplary and I hope vendors will be able to implement the core based on Arm’s guidance and reach the targeted metrics.
The Cortex A76 is said to have already come back in working silicon at two partners and we’ll very likely see it shipping in commercial products by the end of the year. I won’t be beating around the bush here as Huawei and HiSilicon’s product cycle schedule makes it obvious that they’re likely one of the launch partners for the product. Qualcomm has also doubled down on using Arm cores in the mobile space so we should also be seeing the next generation Snapdragon SoCs employ the A76. Among the big players, it’s Samsung LSI which is going to have a tough time – the A76 doesn’t seem to greatly outperform the M3, so at least in theory, the M4’s focus will need to be solely on power efficiency. Then again Arm is very open about their design goals; half the area and half the power at similar performance is something that’s going to be hard to compete against.
The Cortex A76 is said to be the baseline microarchitecture on which Arm will iterate over the next 2 generations at least. Arm has been able to execute their yearly beat roadmap on time for 5 generations now and with yearly 20-25% CAGR it’s going to be a very interesting next couple of years as the mobile space is very quickly approaching the performance of desktop CPUs.
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id4andrei - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
Apple has the manpower and funds to spend extensively for a huge chip for they are free to do things for their own glory. QCOMM designs chip for others to use and must design for price points. They must do so efficiently and maximize yields. ARM provides base designs that others can outright use or customize, you can't really blame ARM here. NVIDIA has no modem.syxbit - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
I get that, but you're missing the point. Sure, the budget phones have a strict budget.An $800 Android flagship should not be tight on the SoC budget. If QCOMM sold an ultra high snapdragon that could compete with the A12 you had better believe the Galaxy S10 and Pixel 3 phones would pay to use it.
truckasaurus - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
Apple has the convenience of designing to a very specific application. Qualcomm ultimately has to create something that can go into many platforms that are defined no more completely than 'high-end mobile'. That's like asking why the 3.5L V6 that's in most of Toyota's vehicles only makes 268 hp, but in the Lotus Evora 400, which uses the same engine, makes 400 hp. It's because it has been tweaked for a very specific application.serendip - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
Then they should sell supercharger kits for Qualcomm chips ;-)That is how the Evora V6 gets 400 hp compared to 280-300 hp on the latest non-turbo versions of that V6. The twin turbo version of that engine on the Lexus LS makes over 450 hp too.
truckasaurus - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
That's essentially what I'm getting at. Qualcomm makes the generic version of the engine that can go into a sedan, an SUV, a coupe, and a convertible and adequately power all of them. Apple says, we're only going to make 1 model of sports car and one large luxury sedan, and because we know exactly what our constraints are on these two platforms, we can add a turbo or a supercharger, we can tweak the timing, we can put a high-flow exhaust on it, etc.Pneumothorax - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
Your point would make sense if the 845 were being used in low end Androids. Since it's pretty much only being used in high end designs, all out performance should've been the goal.syxbit - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
None of what you're saying makes sense. I simply think QCOMM and the rest are behind Apple because they can't do as good a job as Apple. It isn't because the market doesn't exist or because they need to build flexible designs.SirPerro - Friday, June 1, 2018 - link
Oh but many of us reading this conversation think all that really makes sense, and it really is because the market doesn't exist or because they need to build flexible designs.The car engine analogy was pretty great. It's exactly like that.
Threska - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
True. What Apple is good at is showing the potential for what's possible. Other's may have their reasons for not reaching it, but at least none can say it's not possible.shadowx360 - Thursday, May 31, 2018 - link
A lot of it comes down to power consumption. Samsung managed to get close to the A10 performance but at the cost of much higher power draw. With a 4 wide decoder instead of 6 wide, ARM is able to keep power usage in check and if their claims are to be believed, A10 performance at half the power is probably more desirable to the average consumer than A11/A12 performance at Snapdragon 810 levels of thermal throttle.