ARM processors have a smart phone which CPU core

The semiconductor industry has such first company, their teeth processor shipments billions each year, every day we are using smart phone has its merits, but the company from which the money is not much, the "Lei Feng uncle "is the British ARM (Chinese name is Ann seeking international) companies, their ARM processor on a global scale to support a variety of embedded devices, smartphones, tablets, smart wristbands / watches and other products to run their own year £ 1 billion in revenue but it is absolutely puerile, for the benefit of all mankind.

ARM processors occupy the vast majority share in the mobile space

For ARM, we use their products every day, but most people do not understand this company, it is far better than Qualcomm, Apple, MediaTek, Samsung these companies is so familiar that today's super classroom we introduce the ARM The company introduced the Cortex-A series processor core, this is a smart phone, tablet-based mobile SoC processor, which each generation advances are affecting the user experience.
The company's main product types ARM
Before we introduced ARM company is how to operate, money - skillfully deflected the question, ARM is how it works, makes money, they rely mainly on manufacturers to provide processor for authorization to extract royalty earnings, but strictly speaking, ARM and not a single processor company, they have a variety of system IP, physical IP, GPU, video, display, and other products. Of course, the processor is clearly the most important and the largest business of revenue, which can be divided into an open system for Cortex-A, for embedded systems for a variety of Cortex-R and Cortex-M microcontroller series and another for the payments, e-government, SIM cards and other security markets SC series, the entire processor product line's current product range, as shown below:

The main product series of ARM processors

Today is our content Cortex-A series processors, founded twenty years ARM has introduced too many generations instruction set and processor. Most people first contact on a smart phone or a 16-bit ARM processor ARMv6 ARM11 processor family, which is Apple's first generation iPhone processor architecture, but now ARM11 architecture on the official website has no chance to show his face, our presentation will start from 32 ARMv7 family.

ARM Cortex-A processor main models and specifications

ARM launched A series processors Model and technical specifications (click to enlarge)

Cortex-A series processors currently the low end of the A5, respectively, followed by A7, A9, A12 / 17, A15, there is a wonderful comparison of A8, but was eliminated early, these are the 32 ARMv7-A instruction set and 64 age is A53, A57, A72, and the latest release of A35, based on ARMv8-A instruction set.

In the A7 / A15 era, ARM launched big.LITTLE architecture, want to use this size with this combination of processor power and performance to solve the contradiction between the small core of the main A7, A53 and A35 latest three species, they are typically characterized by sequential execution architecture, low lines, low-frequency design, large core is the A15, A17, A57 and A72 these types, such processors are out of order execution architecture, 3 emission decoding, up to 15 stage pipeline design, operation frequencies above 2GHz, mainly for high-performance processing.

big.LITTLE concept is very good, but switching between the size of the nucleus is the test manufacturers design capability, more serious is the processor vendors in the specific implementation has deviated from the original intention of the size of the nucleus, the situation is a high-performance the main nucleus is usually only in the software will run sub-loaded, and lower performance had become a small core of everyday use, the manufacturer if coordination is not good distribution of the two, the end result is either power too quickly, or is poor performance, system Caton.

In addition, the table in terms of performance per MHz per core Dhrystone performance under to measure CPU core performance, but specific performance is still the process with vendors, frequency linked, ARM said in release Cortex-A72 architecture Its performance is 3.5 times the previous generation, this in fact is 14 / 16nm process, A72 2.5GHz comparison of 28nm, 1.6GHz processor the A15 come, A72 replace the object relative to the real performance A57 cores did not so many.

Cortex-A processor architecture design

Cortex-A5 architecture

ARM's Cortex-A5 is the most energy-efficient, lowest-cost 32-bit processor, but in order to achieve low power consumption so its performance is also sacrificed a lot, no L2 cache, NEON and VFP floating-point instructions are optional , with the performance in the smart phone worrying. A5 in the most important application on your smartphone or Qualcomm's Snapdragon S1 and subsequent Xiaolong S4 Play, that is, MSM8625, MSM8225 series.

Cortex-A7 architecture

Cortex-A7 architecture in the smart phone is more famous, support for ARMv7-A instruction set, NEON and VFP floating-point unit are not missing, but also with up to 1MB cache, so now there are also used A7 architecture, millet shipping LCI amount of one million over red rice 2A with the LC1860 is a quad-core Cortex-A7 architecture.
In most cases, A7 and Cortex-A15 core or core component big.LITTLE size core architecture, NVIDIA's renowned processor has Tegra K1, Hass unicorn 920/925, Samsung's Exynos 5420/5420, MediaTek's MT8135 etc. .

Cortex-A8 architecture

Cortex-A8 architecture Cortex-A series processors, the most special, because most every other processor core cluster to achieve four core (total number of cores is not limited, to see the manufacturer's choice), but only a single core A8 Fortunately, that era A8 core mobile processor fight is not so crazy, Apple iPhone 4 with a generation of crew is a single-core A8 processor architecture.

Cortex-A9 architecture

Cortex-A9 processor architecture regarded in the phone is the most brilliant, and both A7 did not like too much emphasis on low power consumption at the expense of performance, nor A15 architecture as the pursuit of performance (A15 ARM architecture was originally launched for the server market ), A9 performance, power more balanced, and age is just a mobile phone A9 processor from single-core to dual-core transition time, dual-core and quad-core A9 architecture later in a representative number of processors, including Apple blockbuster A5 / A5X, NVIDIA's Tegra 2/3, Ti's OMAP 4430/4460, the Samsung Exynos 4210, Huawei Hass K3V2 etc., Qualcomm Krait architecture is also highly acclaimed A9 architecture based on improved.

Cortex-A15 architecture

Cortex-A15 architecture would have been a high-performance ARM core company for the server market, the first use of 3 launch decoding architecture that supports ECC memory, the performance did not have to say, but the attendant power consumption is also a serious problem, then Most use A15 + A7 of big.LITTLE architecture processors are more or less heat problems exist.