Ask the Experts: ARM's Cortex A53 Lead Architect, Peter Greenhalgh
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 10, 2013 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Ask the Experts
Given the timing of yesterday's Cortex A53 based Snapdragon 410 announcement, our latest Ask the Experts installment couldn't be better. Peter Greenhalgh, lead architect of the Cortex A53, has agreed to spend some time with us and answer any burning questions you might have on your mind about ARM, directly.
Peter has worked in ARM's processor division for 13 years and worked on the Cortex R4, Cortex A8 and Cortex A5 (as well as the ARM1176JZF-S and ARM1136JF-S). He was lead architect of the Cortex A7 and ARM's big.LITTLE technology as well.
Later this month I'll be doing a live discussion with Peter via Google Hangouts, but you guys get first crack at him. If you have any questions about Cortex A7, Cortex A53, big.LITTLE or pretty much anything else ARM related fire away in the comments below. Peter will be answering your questions personally in the next week.
Please help make Peter feel at home here on AnandTech by impressing him with your questions. Do a good job here and I might be able to even convince him to give away some ARM powered goodies...
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jeffkibuule - Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - link
We shouldn't infer anything from there being a nice-sized gap between Cortex A53 and A57 which might be the 64-bit version of Cortex A12 which in a hypothetical universe might be named Cortex A55, should we ? :)r3loaded - Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - link
As someone who's worked at ARM fairly recently, plenty of activity was happening around the A53/A57 as well as a new M-class core (it's supposed to be M5 or M7, still undecided) but I never heard anything about a hypothetical mid-range A55. Right now, it's just a gap in the naming scheme, so it might be used in future.Techguy99X - Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - link
Why are the current A7 quad core phones performing similar to the A9 quad (exynos 4412 , tegra 3), although A9 is more advanced and OoO? What is the main difference between A5 and A7, becuase the A7 is just a bit faster than the A5?Peter Greenhalgh - Wednesday, December 11, 2013 - link
Hi Techguy99X,Overall platform performance is dependent on many factors including processor, interconnect, memory controller, GPU, video and more. While the Cortex-A9 is a higher performance processor both in IPC and frequency, ARM partners are continuously improving their platforms and porting them to new process geometries. This allows a new generation Cortex-A7 based platform to improve on an older generation Cortex-A9 based platform.
Compared to Cortex-A5, Cortex-A7 increased load-store bandwidth, allowed more common data-processing operations to dual-issue and made some small improvements in the branch-predictors.
bdub951 - Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - link
Lady luck bless this post!Techguy99X - Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - link
What is the power hit from A5, A7, A9, A12, A15, A53 and A57? And also the die area?deputc26 - Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - link
Great questionsshing3232 - Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - link
+1discotea - Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - link
Why isn't there a more logical naming convention to the ARM cores. I can't tell which is faster an A7 or an A9 core? It seems like your getting better with the A15 being faster than an A9 or A7.Wolfpup - Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - link
It sort of seems like A7 was just named that because they ran out of numbers. My understanding is it was designed to try to get as much of A9's performance as possible in a smaller die, and as such it should be better than A8 (and can have multi-core versions).