ARM Unpacks Cortex-A15 MPCore Processor with Unprecedented 5x Performance Improvement

To dramatically accelerate the capabilities of mobile, consumer and infrastructure applications, Cambridge, U.K.-based ARM today unwrapped its ground-breaking superscalar Cortex-A15 processor with five times improvement in performance over modern advanced smartphone processors while maintaining similar power-consumption standards.

In fact, according to ARM (News - Alert), in advanced infrastructure applications the Cortex-A15 processor running at up to 2.5 GHz will enable highly scalable solutions within constantly shrinking energy, thermal and cost budgets. The Cortex-A15 processor is available for licensing and is targeted at 32 nm and 28 nm process geometries with the ability to scale to lower geometries in the future, said the maker.

As the latest addition to ARM’s Cortex-A family of processors, the superscalar -A15 MPCore processor is tailored at emerging array of products ranging from next-generation smartphones, tablets, large-screen mobile computing and  high-end digital home entertainment devices through to wireless base stations and enterprise infrastructure products.

In a released statement, commented Mike Inglis, EVP and GM, processor division, ARM, “The launch of the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor marks the beginning of an entirely new era for the ARM Partnership. It brings together more than 20 years of ARM expertise in low-power design with a host of new and very aggressive high-performance technologies.”  Inglis added, “The Cortex-A15 MPCore processor will become the next major step along the industry’s energy efficient computing roadmap and open up a wide range of new application possibilities for our Partners.”

Likewise, Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at In-Stat (News - Alert), said “The operational and economic benefits of cloud computing will transform the high-tech industry over the next decade.  Everything from handheld devices to the network infrastructure will require more performance and efficiency to handle the increasing amounts of information that will emerge from the use of remote resources.” “ARM has been at the core of the mobile industry and the Cortex-A15 MPCore and accompanying technologies extends the potential for this highly efficient and flexible architecture to other applications critical to our connected world,”, he added.

 As a long-term key partner, Texas Instruments (News - Alert) has worked with ARM for 17 years, resulting in more than 3 billion ARM processor-based system-on-chip (SoC) devices. Now, the company is the first licensee of the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor, and is planning to leverage the Cortex-A15 core to create industry-leading processors to meet the high performance demands of the next generation connected devices, all within a low-power envelope. “When pairing the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor with TI’s SmartReflex 3 technology, future OMAP applications processors will yield a 60 percent reduction in power, enabling TI to continue delivering the industry’s most energy-efficient, high-performing solutions. We also see the potential for broader market implementations, leveraging the Cortex-A15 core for home entertainment and multimedia applications,” said Remi El-Ouazzane, vice president, OMAP platform business unit, TI.

According to ARM, the Cortex-A15 extends the capabilities of the ARM Cortex-A series by adding efficient hardware support for OS virtualization, soft-error recovery, larger memory addressability and system coherency. It brings a new level of performance scalability as well as a feature set that enables ARM Partners to address a range of innovative and traditional markets with a single processor architecture. Because it is backward compatible, Cortex-A15 enables immediate access to an established developer and software ecosystem, including Android, Adobe Flash Player, Java platform standard edition (Java SE), JavaFX, Linux, Microsoft Windows Embedded Compact 7, Symbian and Ubuntu (News - Alert), along with more than 700 ARM connected community members providing applications software, hardware and software development tools, middleware and SoC design services, said the developer.

Continuing to ddifferentiate through partnerships, Cortex-A15 MPCore processor is the result of ARM’s work with lead licensee partners Samsung, ST Ericsson (News - Alert) and Texas Instruments, who were key drivers of the definition of the processor, noted ARM.