Discussion ARM Cortex/Neoverse IP + SoCs (no custom cores) Discussion

[DZero]

Rockchip unveils RK3668 10-core Arm Cortex-A730/Cortex-A530 SoC with 16 TOPS NPU, RK182X LLM/VLM co-processor - CNX Software

The Rockchip Developer Conference 2025 (RKDC!2025) is now taking place in Fuzhou, China, with some interesting announcements such as the Rockchip RK3668

www.cnx-software.com

NEw Rockchips SoC underway, the RK3688 and RK3668. With unannounced Cortex A730/A530 and also unnanounced ARM Magni GPU.

So, ARM should announce the A730 soon.

 

[soresu]

So, ARM should announce the A730 soon.

Won't be called that.

My money is on Pro A1 for A730, and Nano A1 for A530 going by their declared market segment branding.

Either way it seems like they are resetting to the number 1 for all new IPs in this generation, following the recent Qualcomm type numbering scheme.

Lol, X series is gonna look weird tho:

X3 -> X4 -> X925 -> Ultra A1 😆

 

[Geddagod]

That's actually the way-harder part.
Clocking high IPC cores up without area and power exploding is real tough.

Old comment ik, but Apple's P-core is like 50% larger than the x925 in area, when not including the L2 sram arrays for the x925.
I imagine they have the area budget to spend.
Apple has been pushing Fmax consistently since the M1, I think ARM can do so as well.

 

[DZero]

Won't be called that.

My money is on Pro A1 for A730, and Nano A1 for A530 going by their declared market segment branding.

Either way it seems like they are resetting to the number 1 for all new IPs in this generation, following the recent Qualcomm type numbering scheme.

Lol, X series is gonna look weird tho:

X3 -> X4 -> X925 -> Ultra A1 😆

Funny story Mediatek mentioned 3 BIG cores!
Travis - Ultra A Core
Alto - X9XX Core
Gelas - A7XX core

Don't be surprised if Mediatek moves the Dimensity 9500 AND 8500 into those cores... We already know the 9500.
But as for 8500, my guess is that they will use 2 Alto cores and 6 Gelas ones to finally having more Ultra cores instead of using only A7XX cores.

And that could lead into massive revamps in their 7500 and 6500 lines since Qualcomm moved the upper hand with the SD 7 Gen 4 and 6 Gen 4.

 

[soresu]

Funny story Mediatek mentioned 3 BIG cores!
Travis - Ultra A Core
Alto - X9XX Core
Gelas - A7XX core

Ye pretty old news at this point.

In fact that Korean ARM rumor site I was talking about last year mentioned Alto as filler segment between A7xx and X9nn before anyone else, makes me wonder what their source is.

 

[poke01]

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Full Android on S5E9965 ERD - Geekbench

Benchmark results for a Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Full Android on S5E9965 ERD with an ARM ARMv8 processor.

browser.geekbench.com

Exynos 2600 with SME

 

[gdansk]

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Full Android on S5E9965 ERD - Geekbench

Benchmark results for a Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Full Android on S5E9965 ERD with an ARM ARMv8 processor.

browser.geekbench.com

Exynos 2600 with SME

At reportedly 2500MHz
Wow that's M4 level of IPC and only a year later? on Samsung process? Crazy, guess we'll see it throttle.

 

[DZero]

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Full Android on S5E9965 ERD - Geekbench

Benchmark results for a Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Full Android on S5E9965 ERD with an ARM ARMv8 processor.

browser.geekbench.com

Exynos 2600 with SME

And seems that there are no small/toy cores, this is interesting. No one wants them anymore it seems.

 

[soresu]

No one wants them anymore it seems

Streamer stick/block SoCs (Fire Stick/Google TV/Roku/etc) and various other small consumer electronic smart devices will continue to use them simply for cost reasons.

 

[soresu]

At reportedly 2500MHz
Wow that's M4 level of IPC and only a year later? on Samsung process? Crazy, guess we'll see it throttle.

There are 3 clusters listed, the one with a single core which is likely the X9xx/Ultra core) is 3.55 ghz.

That means the ST result is roughly 3,100.

So still quite a ways to go improving the X9xx/Ultra clock frequency scaling.

 

[MS_AT]

Still no new cores announced it seems, but at least, if I get this right https://morethanmoore.substack.com/p/arm-2026-q1-financials they are publicly talking about growing the royalties further (arm v8 vs v9 is 3% vs 5% and v9 is supposed to grow gen on gen. CSS starts at 10% and is supposed to grow).

 

[DZero]

Still no new cores announced it seems, but at least, if I get this right https://morethanmoore.substack.com/p/arm-2026-q1-financials they are publicly talking about growing the royalties further (arm v8 vs v9 is 3% vs 5% and v9 is supposed to grow gen on gen. CSS starts at 10% and is supposed to grow).

So, making the chips more expensive... heck, at this pace, even RISC-V would become an option in a future.

 

[LightningZ71]

They're milking it while they have the market by the... jewels...

They know that the day is coming where RiscV will be a suitable replacement for much of the market.

 

[poke01]

Not really do you really think design costs are stagnant? It’s been a decade.

 

[LightningZ71]

No. I don't. However, continuing to push prices upwards will always make alternatives more palatable. They are supposed to be getting better at this stuff, increasing the use of automation tools, etc. It will eventually catch up to them.

 

[DZero]

Still no new cores announced it seems, but at least, if I get this right https://morethanmoore.substack.com/p/arm-2026-q1-financials they are publicly talking about growing the royalties further (arm v8 vs v9 is 3% vs 5% and v9 is supposed to grow gen on gen. CSS starts at 10% and is supposed to grow).

Wait... Huawei will get affected by the royalties increase then?

 

[Shivansps]

kernel/arch/arm64/boot/dts/qcom/qcs9075-airbox-dragon-100.dts at 6cfd41b8a14d325c955a86230aa81ab45a22c1e9 · radxa/kernel

BSP kernel source. Contribute to radxa/kernel development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Radxa Airbox-dragon-100
with qcs9075

 

[Doug S]

Still no new cores announced it seems, but at least, if I get this right https://morethanmoore.substack.com/p/arm-2026-q1-financials they are publicly talking about growing the royalties further (arm v8 vs v9 is 3% vs 5% and v9 is supposed to grow gen on gen. CSS starts at 10% and is supposed to grow).

3% and 5% of what? And for what? It says those rates are based on "ASP", and they obviously aren't pulling a Qualcomm and charging based on the device it goes in. But how would you even charge for the ASP (I guess price TSMC charged to fab?) of a chip since there's a lot of difference between an ARM server chip that's basically all ARM cores versus a chip that's got a few ARM support cores but is mostly something else.

 

[adroc_thurston]

3% and 5% of what? And for what? It says those rates are based on "ASP", and they obviously aren't pulling a Qualcomm and charging based on the device it goes in. But how would you even charge for the ASP (I guess price TSMC charged to fab?) of a chip since there's a lot of difference between an ARM server chip that's basically all ARM cores versus a chip that's got a few ARM support cores but is mostly something else.

pretty sure hyperscale gets custom licensing agreements with custom rates for Neoverse.
so we basically don't know.