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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ChrisGX - Thursday, May 27, 2021 - link
Yes, @melgross, @mattbe and @mode_13h are absolutely right. Apple has an architectural license from ARM, viz. a license for the ARM ISA rather than any physical IP. Not deterred by that some individuals commenting here seem to want to suggest that Apple has infringed on ARM's IP or somehow by nefarious means has acquired crucial information about proprietary tech found in ARM chips without stumping up the cash for it. These suggestions are pathetic. If a patent infringement is being alleged please tell us the patent number so that we can determine for ourselves whether there really has been a patent infringement. Or, is a criminal conspiracy with other parties to steal trade secrets from ARM being asserted? There is an obvious problem with that idea. Does anyone seriously suppose that ARM would fail to have Apple before a court demanding a huge settlement for theft of trade secrets, if it had any reason to think that Apple had been engaged in such an exercise? Uninformed individuals are just making up things that chime with their sense of how things must be. Hmm...here's a thought. If you know so little about a topic that you wouldn't be willing to stake your reputation on it or swear to in a court, say, then perhaps saying nothing on the topic would be a better choice than pretending to possess knowledge that you so obviously don't possess.mode_13h - Saturday, May 29, 2021 - link
> Uninformed individuals are just making up things that chime with> their sense of how things must be.
Welcome to the world of internet comment forums.
> If you know so little about a topic that you wouldn't be willing to stake your reputation on it
We don't do "reputation". Everybody is on equal footing, here. Just challenge them with facts, references, and sound logic.
jeremyshaw - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
Thanks SarahKerrigan, igor velky. I was mostly thinking of configurations we didn't commonly see. We have seen 4xLITTLE, 2xbig.4xLITTLE, etc even the 8xA78C. The slides on page 5 cover setups we have seen before. Mostly curious if the fabric is tied to specific configs like was implied at the 8xA78C launch, or if it's flexible enough to have, say, two X2, two A710, four A510, or something like one X2 with four A510 (like Intel's Lakefield), etc. IMO, there are a lot of embedded controllers that don't need a lot of CPU throughput, but can benefit from one faster core for UI.Kangal - Saturday, May 29, 2021 - link
I'm more interested in seeing a 3+5 design.The "Large Cores" just aren't good on a phone, a tablet maybe, not on a phone. We're already getting throttling on the "Medium Cores" (eg Cortex A78/A710). And most tasks on Android are handled great in Dualcore mode, and very few in Quad-core mode, when looking at the schedulers. So Three Medium Cores will offer 95% of the performance of your regular flagship processor. Extending the Small Cores to a group of five, also can help efficiency by having more performance in the lower zone, reducing the amount of times the large cores need to be stressed.
However, with what was announced today, we can actually expect a REDUCTION in 2022 ARM processors compared to 2021 ARM processors. I mean we're talking about 10% gains in X2, 10% gains in A710, and 1% gains in A510, when compared to a design that should be on a better node with better cache. That's not guaranteed with the continuing Chip Shortage. IN FACT most chipmakers are willing to "cheap out" and simply use the marketing of "running on ARMv9" to justify the higher cost and lower performance.
They stuffed up with the naming scheme btw. And they really stuffed up by not removing 32-bit support completely. And they stuffed up with not doing a blank-sheet approach, for a revolutionary ARMv9 design. We're going to see the smallest gains in Android Phones, just like it happened when people were comparing the QSD 800/801/805 to the QSD 808/810 (Cortex A57) back in 2015. Which hopefully means ARMs other divisions in UK/France can pick the slack and come with a proper successor. This would be the Cortex A72 to their Cortex A57, a la, 2022 A710 versus the 2023 A730. Though I doubt the little cores will get any improvement besides a 10% bump due to the node lithography improvements.
psychobriggsy - Monday, June 21, 2021 - link
Theoretically this should support 16 A510s (8 clusters), as each cluster shares a port on the interconnect.We may see 2X 4B 4L configurations (10 cores) one day, but in the main I guess we're stuck with 1X 3B 4L (8L?) options. I see budget chips using 4L+4L (wider FP on some).
Wonder if there's room for an A310 chip (4 int cores per cluster, 1 shared FP, 2-wide).
docola - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
does the shift to 64 bit cpus and apps mean that todays phone will startbecoming obsolete starting next year?
iphonebestgamephone - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
If you are on a 32 bit phone yeahdocola - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
fun... so this means i shouldnt buy an expensive phone for another 1 or 2 years,because this is gonna be one of those rare REAL shift in tech... sigh....
supdawgwtfd - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
Current phones support 64bit instructions...No need to delay.
docola - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
great thanks! i know i sound ignorant in here oh well