Arm Announces Mobile Armv9 CPU Microarchitectures: Cortex-X2, Cortex-A710 & Cortex-A510
by Andrei Frumusanu on May 25, 2021 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- SoCs
- CPUs
- Arm
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- Cortex
- ARMv9
- Cortex-X2
- Cortex-A710
- Cortex-A510
Conclusion & First Impressions
Today’s Arm Client TechDay disclosures were generally quite a lot more extensive than in the last few years, especially given the number of new IP releases we’ve covered. Three new CPU microarchitectures, a new DSU/L3 cluster design, and two new SoC interconnect IPs is quite a bit more than we’re used to, and it goes to underscore just how much effort Arm is putting into updating all of the parts of its client IP.
Starting off with the CPUs, the new Cortex-X2 and Cortex-A710 cores are meant to be iterative designs compared to their predecessors, and that's certainly what they are from a performance and efficiency viewpoint. On a generational basis, Arm is promising a 10-16% improvement in IPC. However these figures are somewhat muddled by the fact we’re also comparing 4MB and 8MB L3 caches. Generally, it’s a reasonable expectation of what we’ll be seeing in 2022 devices, but it’s also hard to disambiguate and attribute the performance of the cores versus that of the new DSU-110 L3 cluster design.
Arm has also made some more lofty performance claims when it comes to actual device implementations in 2022, such as +30% peak-to-peak performance boosts on the parts of the X2 cores. Generally, given our expectations that both the next Snapdragon and the next Exynos flagships will come in a similar Samsung foundry process node with smaller improvements, I’m very doubtful we’ll be seeing such larger generational improvements in practice, unless somehow MediaTek surprises us with a flagship X2 SoC made out at TSMC.
While the X2 and A710 aren’t all that groundbreaking, we have to note that the move towards Armv9 brings a lot of new architectural features that would otherwise eat into the expected yearly performance or efficiency improvements. The move to the new ISA baseline has been a long time coming and I’m curious to see what it will enable in terms of media applications (SVE) or AI (new ML instructions).
This is also the fourth and last iteration of Arm’s Austin core family, so hopefully next year’s new Sophia family will see larger generational leaps. Arm admits that we’re nearing diminishing returns and it’s certainly not at the same break-neck pace it was moving a few years ago, but there’s still a lot which can be done.
Today we also saw the unveiling of a brand-new little core in the form of the Cortex-A510. A new clean-sheet design from the Cambridge team, it’s certainly using an innovative approach given its “merged core” design, sharing the L2 cache hierarchy and the FP/SIMD back-end amongst two otherwise full featured cores. The performance and IPC gains are claimed to be quite large at +35-50%, however it seems that this generation hasn’t improved the efficiency curve all that much. It’s still a much better design and will have effective benefits for power efficiency in real-world workloads due to how workloads interact between the little and larger cores, but leaves us with a feeling that it doesn’t provide a knock-out convincing jump we had expected after 4 years. The silver lining here is that Arm is promising further generational improvements in performance and power with subsequent iterations, so we won’t be left with the current state of affairs the same way we saw the Cortex-A55 stagnate.
One of the more key points I saw Arm put their focus on was the new possibilities in larger form-factor devices beyond mobile. The new DSU-110 now supports up to 8 Cortex-X2 cores, a theoretical setup that would pretty much blow away the current Cortex-A76 based Arm laptop SoCs such as the Snapdragon 8cx family. The new cluster design allows for large L3 caches of up to 16MB, and while I don’t know if we’ll see the new interconnect IPs used by the larger vendors, it surely also makes a big argument for larger performance designs. The catch is that if Qualcomm were to adopt and make such a design, it would seemingly be short-lived given their recent Nuvia acquisition and intent on using custom cores. Otherwise, because of a lack of Mali Windows drivers, this really only leaves space for a theoretical Samsung laptop SoC with AMD RDNA GPU, but such a SoC could nonetheless be very successful.
Overall, this year’s CPU and system IP announcements from Arm are extremely solid new IP offerings, really laying down a new foundation, both architecturally with Armv9, and microarchitecturally thanks to elements such as the new DSU and the new little core CPUs. We’re looking forward to the new 2022 SoCs and products that will be powered by the new Arm IP.
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mode_13h - Wednesday, May 26, 2021 - link
> Android needs to get their developers to stop using Java and use C/C++/Rust for their apps to eek out the max performance possible.No, I'm sure Google would rather they use Go.
Also, unless you compile your C++ to web asm, it has the disadvantage of leaving out users on newer devices not supported by the NDK version where you built your app. Like RISC V, for instance. Interpreted languages and those that compile into a portable intermediate representation don't have this problem.
> it's a long time nagging issue that I wish the Android community would solve.
Your best hope is that Web Assembly takes over, then.
hlovatt - Thursday, May 27, 2021 - link
> Android needs to get their developers to stop using Java and use C/C++/Rust for their apps to eek out the max performance possible.> Apple's App code base is generally C/C++, that's why they have the performance
Apple code is mainly Objective-C and Swift (neither are particularly fast).
> https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/bench...
These benchmarks are largely discredited because they include the start up time in the measurements, which unrealistically hampers virtual machines as used by Java. Its like opening your mailer, typing a couple of characters, and then shutting down your mailer, opening your mailer again, another couple of characters, repeat. Then saying you mailer is slow. Most apps are long running and counting the opening and closing down of the virtual machine for a small task doesn't give useful results.
mode_13h - Wednesday, May 26, 2021 - link
> Apple is in a very very special situation where they control everything. Hardware,> software, product. Plus they use the best process there is at the moment.
> All of this, contributes to their results. Which are very good, but they stem from
> what I told you.
They get a benefit from using the latest process, but that doesn't help them relative to anyone else on that same process node. ARM probably does as much work or more to port their IP to a process node & libraries as Apple does.
They *do* get a benefit from controlling the OS. I'll grant you that. The main thing that can probably help is dialing in clockspeed & thermal management, as well as how load-balancing with the low-power cores is managed.
However, the rest of it is irrelevant for SPEC scores, because the Anandtech team uses the same compilers and the SPEC source is also the same.
> Their cores are not exactly suited for the plethora of android devices that range from 50 bucks to 2000+.
Well, the upper end of that range, yes. That's the biggest thing Apple has in their favor: bigger budgets for bigger cores on newer nodes.
> ARM cpus lose compatibility totally once in a while, which is not something that will work in the long run.
Seems like little-to-no burden for ARMv9 CPUs to retain ARMv8 compatibility, though. When they go to ARMv10, that might be a different story.
> Intel hasn't introduced anything major since 2015!
If Sunny Cove doesn't count as something new, then I think your standards are unrealistic.
BTW, if you want bigger micro-architectural changes, try Gracemont.
Silma - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
Apple & ARM benefit from the best foundries in the world, which has not been the case for Intel for at least 3 years.If Intel catches up in production tech or gets access to the same process than Apple and Co, we'll see who has the better designs for which workloads.
melgross - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
I do think that Intel’s designs are better than AMD designs. They’re not that much s,owner, when they are, and and is on a smaller, faster node. But as far as Apple’s designs, I doubt it. The designs are too different to make that claim. Additionally, and SoC is far more than just CPU cores. That just a fifth of Apple’s SoC.igor velky - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
AMD didnt invent multichip modules, those are lies !IBM had servers with multichip cpus in like 1985ish
Intel Core2 had some cpus which were MCM, too.
ten or so years ago.
mode_13h - Wednesday, May 26, 2021 - link
> Intel Core2 had some cpus which were MCMThe Pentium Pro had its L2 cache on a separate die.
kgardas - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
x86 is dead? Well, it is, welcome amd64.Anyway, I would not consider latest Zen or Sunny Cove/Willow Cove cores as non-competitive even with the latest Apple Mx designs. IMHO they are doing fine. Now, do you know that Alder Lake/Sapphire Rappids will have Golden Cove? And that should arrive this and early next year probably. The core should again provide quite nice bump in IPC. So both ARM and even Apple will have again more than adequate competition. No, neither intel nor amd are dead. Pretty exciting times ahead...
GeoffreyA - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
Oh boy, here we go again. x86, dead. Apple M1, enchanted stuff. Intel/AMD, rubbish for the dump. All hail, Apple!Silver5urfer - Wednesday, May 26, 2021 - link
Logically their tunnel vision has only 2 possible reasonsOne - Apple hardcore fans and somehow their daily tasks and lives rely only on Mac OS or iOS, ignorant on the reality and dumb to believe SPEC and Apple marketing PR.
Two - They hate Intel a lot and also PC platform a lot, have a console probably and a Macbook BGA junk.
I do not know what else and why would anyone hate x86 processors from Intel and AMD, I do not see any point since they are the PCs we can own today and they will last literally for decades. People are using old school Xeon for home server and old school pre SSE4.2, basically Phenom II and Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Processors to play damn latest games with community patches for .exes, then we have the latest HW for PC in HEDT and Mainstream for multiple use cases.
Why would anyone hate the only processing standard which has excellent backwards compat full blown parts system for DIY and repair etc, and literally choice of your own OS - Linux, Windows and some Intel HW for Hackintosh. Yep they are dumb and ignorant for sure.