ARM Shares Updated Cortex A53/A57 Performance Expectations
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 6, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- SoCs
- CPUs
- Arm
- Cortex A53
- Cortex A57
With the first Cortex A53 based SoCs due to ship in the coming months, and Cortex A57 based designs to follow early next year, ARM gave us a quick update on performance expectations for both cores. Given the timing of both designs we'll see a combination of solutions built on presently available manufacturing processes (e.g. 28nm) as well as next gen offerings (20/16FF). The graph above gives us an updated look at performance expectations (in web browsing workloads) for both ARM 64-bit cores.
If we compare across the same process nodes (28nm in both cases), the Cortex A53 should give us nearly a 50% increase in performance compared to ARM's Cortex A7. The Cortex A57 should offer roughly the same increase in performance compared to Cortex A15 as well. Although the A57 will do so at higher power, power efficiency may be better depending on the workload thanks to the added performance. Thankfully we won't see many A57 designs built on 28nm in mobile (AMD's first Cortex A57 design will be aimed at servers and is built on a 28nm process).
If you combine architectural improvements with a new process node, the gains are substantial. Move to 20nm or 16FF for these designs and the improvement over their 32-bit predecessors easily exceeds 50%.
ARM also provided some Geekbench 3 performance data comparing the Cortex A57 to A15, both in 32-bit and 64-bit mode. We already know Geekbench 3 is particularly sensitive to the new instructions that come along with AArch64, but even in 32-bit mode there's still a 15 - 30% increase in performance over the Cortex A15 at the same clocks.
Qualcomm has already announced its Snapdragon 410, 610 and 615 will use ARM's Cortex A53, while its 808 and 810 will use a combination of Cortex A53s and A57s.
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[-Stash-] - Tuesday, May 6, 2014 - link
I want a revamped Nokia 808 with an 808 in it :)Taneli - Tuesday, May 6, 2014 - link
What's wrong with arm11?[-Stash-] - Tuesday, May 6, 2014 - link
Then I wouldn't be able to get the trifecta and video a Roland TR-808 with it…SydneyBlue120d - Tuesday, May 6, 2014 - link
I'd like to see a performance (and watt/performance) comparison between Qualcomm Krait 450 CPU Architecture in the 805 and the "Vanilla" A53 CPU Architecture in Snapdragon 610/615... I think clock difference and better architecture will be enough to keep the lead in Krait realm... or not?Krysto - Tuesday, May 6, 2014 - link
Cortex A53 is most definitely better perft/Watt wise than Krait. Whether Krait will be better than Cortex A57 in perf/Watt that remains to be seen, but it will definitely be weaker in performance. Qualcomm has milked Krait for far too long. Not to mention you get a lot of other more specific performance advantages from the ARMv8 architecture. Qualcomm has nothing to show but repacked chips with repackaged names this year, and they won't for a while (mid-2015).beginner99 - Tuesday, May 6, 2014 - link
Yeah but if only the core/CPU mattered and not the whole SOC (especially included LTE modem) Intel should have the lead and we all know that isn't the case.mczak - Tuesday, May 6, 2014 - link
I wouldn't quite say they milked Krait for far too long but yes the 450 is one iteration too many (Qualcomm missed the armv8 boat badly). I suspect running 32bit code it would still have better perf/w than A57 but it is indeed possible the A57 gets competitive there (something the A15 was not) due to be able to run armv8 code.Morawka - Tuesday, May 6, 2014 - link
"(Qualcomm missed the armv8 boat badly)"haha man they did so bad. its gonna cost them the company i think.
Morawka - Tuesday, May 6, 2014 - link
if not the company then a lot of frackin moneydrexnx - Tuesday, May 6, 2014 - link
or none at all, because they're an ARM licensee. If Krait isn't competitive vs. vanilla ARM for the next year, QC can roll vanilla ARM products until Krait's successor comes on stream.QC is in EVERY flagship android phone right now - those kind of OEM relationships don't go away because their core isn't the best of the best for 12 months. I.E. when scorpion (snap S3) was blatantly inferior to A9, HTC, samsung, etc. all still rolled Snapdragon S3 dualcores anyway.