ARM® Cortex™-A15 Launch Panel Discussion Part 1 and 2

[cbn]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmopvGpcMAo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4Eo84Uia0Y&feature=related

Execs for Compal, Dell, HP and Nokia talk about Cortex A15.

 

[Idontcare]

Cliffs for the attention deficit disorder folks in the crowd?

 

[nonameo]

Yes cliffs + ritalin please.

 

[Soccerman06]

Cliffs for the attention deficit disorder folks in the crowd?

A-15 will dominate and put sandybridge to shame. It will also make jersey shore your favorite show.

 

[cbn]

Cliffs for the attention deficit disorder folks in the crowd?

The Dell executive brought up how ARM were currently deployed for "content consumption" in the consumer market. But then said he was excited to see if Cortex A15 could get ARM "over the hump" and into content creation as well. ( this happened ~4:10-4:20 into the Part 1 video). He also mentioned (near the end of the part 2 video) he thought something called "Kingfisher" could be a real game changer for ARM.

There was also some generalized talk of form factors, servers, infrastructure management, Cloud computing and how ARM processors could allow devices to more easily communicate with their environment.

For anyone unfamiliar with Cortex A15 here is the Anandtech article and some notes I took on that.

Cliff Notes:

1-4 cores
superscalar, out of order
Hardware virtualization
private L1 caches but a shared L2 cache (similar to the A9).
low latency l2 cache up to 4MB in size
improved FPU performance
1 - 1.5GHz single or dual-core for smartphones and mobile devices
1 - 2GHz dual or quad-core for netbooks/notebooks/nettops
1.5 - 2.5GHz quad-core for home and web servers

 

[cbn]

Any opinions on how ARM efficiency will compare to Intel at the level of higher power processors (Cortex A15 and beyond)?

I am under the impression ARM (with its lighter instruction set) does well in performance per watt against Atom (with its heavier instruction set).

 

[cbn]

He also mentioned (near the end of the part 2 video) he thought something called "Kingfisher" could be a real game changer for ARM.

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4212774/ARM-updates-roadmap-with-Kingfisher--Cygnet

Kingfisher revealed in EE Times today.

ARM updates roadmap with Kingfisher, Cygnet
Peter Clarke
2/1/2011 3:46 PM EST

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Processor IP licensor ARM Holdings plc has tipped several additional cores in its roadmap for 2011 during a presentation provided as a background to the company's fourth quarter and full year financial results.

Warren East, president and CEO of ARM, tipped the Kingfisher and Cygnet cores due to emerge in 2011. "Kingfisher is aimed at lower end smartphones and feature phones and cost-sensitive digital TV applications. It's a small A-class processor," East told financial analysts assembled to discuss ARM's financial results.

For the microcontroller end of the market East mentioned Cygnet which is a system design product designed to work with the Cortex-M series of cores. "It is intended to accelerate developers time to market," East said without revealing further details.

East also highlighted Mali NG as the core to follow on from the Mali T604, which was launched at the ARM Technology Conference in November 2010. East told EE Times that Mali NG would be an extension of the current architecture rather than a dramatic change but nonetheless will further increase ARM's graphics capability. "ST talked about licensing the next-generation Mali graphics. They're talking about great success with their existing Mali graphics processor, having ten design wins so far with their Mali 400, but the next generation giving them another five-fold increment in performance."