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ARM Cortex A7 presentation

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ARM’s big.LITTLE demonstration

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Cheaper Smarter phones

High spec look and feel
Technology company ARM’s expertise chip design is demonstrated by the fact that their chips are in over 90 percent of the world’s smartphones. They draw on the skills of their globally-based research teams, including their HQ in Cambridge UK, where the ARM team have launched an ultra efficient processor for smartphones that would make phones more affordable, especially in developing countries.

Based on ARM’s concept of ‘big.LITTLE’, the chip can also be paired with more powerful processors in a ‘hybrid’ model to reduce power consumption. The Cortex A7 performance is similar to current high spec chips, at a fraction of the price and uses less battery power. The A7 chip is ARM’s solution for a fast-expanding market for cheaper web-connected smartphones.

More power for less
Nandan Nayampally, ARM’s Director of Product Marketing, explains the Cortex A7 origins in their big selling predecessor, the ARM926, ‘Generation to generation, processing power has improved, but we needed to look beyond that to deliver performance while keeping the power use and the cost low. We took that as our must-have goal. We have had multiple different processors, which have evolved over the last eight to ten years and we’ve used the refinements to come up with a very compact processor. You use what you’ve learnt to get the right innovation.’

Man with smartphone © TommL - iStockphoto

Pooling expertise
There are benefits to the scale of their operation. The techniques developed for minute processors come in handy for the bigger processors and vice versa. Hence the ‘big.LITTLE’ concept for battery operated devices. Essentially, this is based on the idea that the little processor can perform most of the main operating tasks but with less power consumption. Once a peak performance task is required, the big processor can take over. The emphasis is on the little processor as the dominant user, not the bigger power hungry processor. As Nampally points out, ‘you get the responsiveness that you expect of next generation devices and at the same time increasing battery life.’ And by maximising the strengths of existing technology there isn’t the added development expense.

Nampally sees the Cortex A7’s ‘big.LITTLE’ concept as a future trend. With increasing emphasis on energy star ratings, digital devices such as the TV or satellite set top box will benefit from the A7’s power sharing model. Its less power hungry processor will do most of the work.

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