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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ikjadoon - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
Fair; I'll take a K12 successor as recompense.The business side is good context I forgot, but now in 2021, AMD is in much better straits and surely K12's successor is worth a shot.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/7990/amd-announces-...
Surely there were great ideas in Keller's work, their team's work, in their post-Styx designs
AMD might find a lot of benefit in preparing an Arm roadmap. What's to stop consoles, laptops, desktops from switching to Arm, from AMD"s financial perspective? Hopefully, they have clear eyes on x86's relevance to both consumers & businesses. AMD has a knack for fighting back, so I hope the build on their financial momentum.
TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, May 26, 2021 - link
Compatibility, performance, and existence.ARM brings compatibility issues with previously existing software. Emulation wont work 100%,a nd compatibility with existing hardware is a minefield
With that emulation/compatibility layer comes performance degregations. Sometimes it may not be so bad, other times it will be horrendous. The overall software market is not as tightly controlled as apple's walled garden approach.
And finally, existence. There is currently no high performance ARM processor in existence. Show me a desktop ARM process ro that could replace a 5900x or a 10900k. How about one that could replace the CPU in the PS5? Currently one does not exist. You could say one exists for laptops, but that is only available for apple.
mode_13h - Thursday, May 27, 2021 - link
> There is currently no high performance ARM processor in existence.There are probably a dozen ARM server processors on the market or still in service that would fit a reasonable definition of high-performance.
> Show me a desktop ARM processor that could replace a 5900x or a 10900k.
I see you stuck that word "desktop" in there. Desktop is probably the last market ARM would penetrate. So, if your point is that you won't take ARM seriously until there's a competitive ARM-based desktop offering, that's like reaching for the fire extinguisher once you're surrounded by flames instead of when you first smell smoke.
I'm eager to see what V1-based CPUs look like. Those cores could make for a viable workstation CPU.
mode_13h - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
And don't forget about Chinese designs (although this one is mentioned as being A72-derived):https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/hisilicon/microarchit...
SarahKerrigan - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
The KP920 core isn't A72 derived. It says "from A72" but all it's saying there is that its predecessor used A72's - it's not saying the core is derived from A72's.That being said, with Phytium and Hisilicon cut off from TSMC, mainland core development may not result in compelling silicon any time soon.
eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
Fair point on "no custom cores". However, I don't expect any custom cores from Ampere coming to a smartphone near me anytime soon, and QC seems to want Nuvia's IP mostly for larger systems. Neither strikes me as a source for efficiency cores in the mobile space. QC may incorporate Nuvia's tech into big cores for its SoCs , but I doubt they'd even do that.eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
Addendum: ".. anytime soon" to the end of the last sentence. They probably will try big cores for their SoCs, but I'm afraid they'll pair those with A510 LITTLE cores.mode_13h - Wednesday, May 26, 2021 - link
> I'm afraid they'll pair those with A510 LITTLE cores.As opposed to what? We saw nothing to suggest the A510 is *worse* than A55. And if you're doing ARMv9, then there are no other options (except proprietary).
Also, why are you freaking out over A510? It's a little underwhelming, but it's not *bad*.
mode_13h - Wednesday, May 26, 2021 - link
> QC seems to want Nuvia's IP mostly for larger systemsNo. Nuvia said they were building server cores, but Qualcomm's messaging around the acquisition was that Nuvia will build cores showing up in mobile SoCs, first.
They didn't rule out the possibility of larger systems, but that's clearly not their priority.
roboman21 - Tuesday, May 25, 2021 - link
Apple is lightyears ahead and it is due in no small part to this acquisition:https://www.anandtech.com/show/3665/apples-intrins...
This is tough to pull of but it can yield advantages to a competitor with the same ARM core and 7nM semiconductor process.