Android and Windows Phone based smartphones equipped with first-generation 64-bit processors are yet to become mainstream, but ARM has already announced successors to those chips. Today, ARM has announced three new high-end mobile chips; Cortex-A72 CPU, Mali-T880 GPU, and CoreLink CCI-500. All these chipsets will be a part of flagship mobile products which will be released in 2016.
The ARM Cortex-A72, which is a successor to the high-end Cortex-A57 CPU, is a second-generation 64-bit CPU. ARM claims that Cortex-A72 is 3.5x faster than Cortex-A15 and 1.9x faster than Cortex-A57, yet it consumes similar amount of energy. Thanks to 16nm FinFET+ fabrication process, as well as architectural and structural changes, these new chips will sip 75 percent less power under similar processing loads when compared to Cortex-A15. ARM stated that these chipsets will offer extended performance and power efficiency when couple with Cortex-A53 CPU cores.
The Mali-880GPU, which is a successor to Mali-T760 GPU, is 1.8x more powerful and yet consumes 40 percent less energy. ARM claims that this GPU has been designed with premium 4K content in mind. It is expected to compete with Imagination Technologies' PowerVR G6xxx GPUs and Qualcomm's Adreno 430 GPU.
The CoreLink CCI-500 interconnect chipset will help the SoCs in consuming even less power, thanks to the snoop filter. It will also provide 30 percent improvement in processor memory performance over CCI-400.
ARM has already teamed up with MediaTek, HiSilicon, and Rockchip to utilise these new chipsets into their upcoming mobile SoC solutions.
