ARM officially announces Cortex-A15 processor for portable devices, smartphones

By on Sep 9, 2010 at 11:27 AM
mobile September 9, 2010

Today, chip maker ARM announced the Cortex-A15 MPCore processor; a processor that “delivers a 5x performance improvement over today’s advanced smartphone processors, within a comparable energy footprint.” The A15 is available for licensing today and is targeting devices with 32nm and 28nm platforms; a 20nm A15 offering will be available in the future. The processor is capable of speeds up to 2.5 GHz, can support up to 4 MB of L2 cache, and can address up to 1 terabyte of memory. The company has said its smartphone A15 line will run between 1 GHz and 1.5 GHz in both single and dual-core configurations. As the press release states, the newest Cortex will support: Android, Adobe Flash Player, Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE), JavaFX, Linux, Microsoft Windows Embedded Compact 7, Symbian, and Ubuntu. Bring on. The hardware.

Read [Press Release, More Info]

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24 Comments

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  • Bill

    awesome news. can’t wait!

    • tom

      I can’t imagine having one of these blazing chip in my blackberry (or Android).

      We are talking about 2.5x higher clock speed than snapdragon!!!

  • SKINNI

    I just need one with a mirror video out by hdmi & bluetooth keyboard/mouse support now!

  • debbie barnes

    Glory!

  • Hollaman

    Fuck yeah, ARM is the intel of this decade.

  • GN

    ooo baby….never thought a processor would get me to rise to any occasion:P

  • Choco Taco

    I can’t wait for the DROID Incredible 2.6 with this processor. I just hope it comes out at least two months after the DROID Incredible 2 does.

  • TheOtherGeoff

    ARM is less about Intel, and more about X86, since ARM holdings is a fabless organization. Intel, given that they designed and built microprocessors, has a deeper profit channel. ARM on the other hand, was originally the Acorn Risk Machine, yet, Acorn ceased to be viable, now it’s Advanced RISC Machines (ltd). Since they are royalty driven, their upside is less so, but their ability to build a great spec is unhampered by past implementation decisions (to a point).

    ARM as an architecture, is where MIPS and SPARC, and DEC Alpha all were hoping to be… Interesting that it predates almost all those architectures, never had the marketing nova that each had, but is now the premium standard for what RISC was meant to be, maximizing compute speed with a minimal set of transistors and energy demands.

    Intel on the other hand, got all hamstrung up with building massive systems on a chip (SoC),64 bit, backwards compatibility with older architectures (the Windows/DOS comets tail) et al, instead of the purity of a true RISC system, albeit ARM now has the VFP (vector floating point) and MMU coprocessing built in.

    Disclaimer: Psion 5 owner.

    • GN

      Wiki?

    • Killah Kyle

      Um, what?

    • Dara

      Very good post.

      It’s funny that every SPARCstation, IRIS, or Octane box that I’ve ever seen has been this huge, bulky, immovable lump and that the legacy of those architectures fits nicely in your pocket.

  • Joe

    Am I the only one thinking:

    Lets see a processor of equivalent performance to chips of today but with 5x smaller energy footprint?

    or some combination in-between?

    • GN

      Tegra? A-9 Hummingbird..(future tense)

    • $incere

      Agreed

  • tech junkie for life

    ARM’s Race!

  • ChocoTaco

    Quite impressive. Pretty big jump from today’s technologies. I just hope there is a big performance per clock increase so we can keep the clock speeds low and the performance high.

  • debbie barnes

    who cares about more speed when u cant make it thru a decent day of use.

    • ohmy

      exactly…whats the point of all these crazy speeds when it’ll just drain our batteries?

      battery technology isn’t catching up @ all

      well, the stuff in the pipeline is coming out anytime soon…

      how much speed do you really need if you have a smart/good coders doing their job properly, not being lazy, and just relying on hardware to do their job for them

  • Pshaw Right

    We won’t see devices based on A15 on the market for at least another 18 months…heck I can’t even find any Cortex A9 devices and that core was taped out years ago???

    • Pshaw Right

      wait…did Tegra 2 actually ship inside anything yet??

      • GN

        dont believe so..they working on some dual core…used in tablets/netbooks ect…..uses 30%..dont quote me…less stress on the battery efficiency.

      • Jeremy

        windows phone 7 will have tegra 2′s

      • http://seriousmobile.wordpress.com Donny

        Tegra 2 ships in ALL new 2010 Audi models as part of the MMI system.

        Thus far: Audi A8, Audi S5, Audi A3 2010; all currently have it; 2011 model R8 will also have it.

        It’ll be used to control:
        Climate, DVD, Navigation, BT connections for calls, seat controls & heating, etc.

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