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ARM unveils the Cortex-X3, A715 and A510 Refresh as its latest CPU cores to make mobile devices faster, yet more economical

ARM unveils its latest CPU products. (Source: ARM)
ARM unveils its latest CPU products. (Source: ARM)
ARM has made the Cortex-X3 official today. With its up-to-25% performance boost over the X2, It will probably be a marquee core for next-gen flagship mobile SoCs; however, the OEM asserts that the equally new A715 and refreshed A510 have their places right alongside it thanks to their complementary power-efficiency and scalable specs.

Truly next-gen flagship processors such as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 may be no more than a few months away now, and as if in anticipation, ARM has chosen to make its new Cortex-X3 official. This successor to the Cortex-X2 is rated for "ultimate performnace" of up to 25% greater year-on-year; in fact, ARM projects that it might contribute to new top clock rates of 3.3GHz, as per its latest internal SPECRate 2017_int_base, SPECint_base2006 and Geekbench 5 benchmarks.

The X3 is also now touted as the third top-end core running to exhibit "double-digit" (11%) boosts to IPC over the previous generation. It has been presented alongside the latest ARM DynamIQ Shared Unit, the DSU-110, a module rated to allow for heterogenous clusters that include the X3 to go up to 12 cores - in fact, one can now apparently have a single chip made of 8 X3s, thanks to their maker's most recent leaps in terms of scalability.

However, that would get pretty expensive on several levels pretty quickly. Accordingly, ARM recommends also taking the new Cortex-A715 into account when building a new SoC. It is rated for 20% greater power efficiency, yet for up to 5% more performance at need, when backing up another core such as the X3.

Therefore, both new cores might be found together in many configurations (which can now range through the newer 1+3+4 option through the more traditional 2+2+4 set-up all the way to the more novel 8+4+0 architecture) throughout 2023. However, ARM also of course now pitches its cores at ultrabook-style use-cases as well, and backs the X3 to make single-thread gains of up to 34% compared to current Windows on ARM devices.

On that note, ARM has ditched the AArch32 decoder in the name of efficiency, meaning that X3/A715-based processors are 64-bit only, as opposed to the Cortex-A710. That is where the new A510 comes in. It is a refresh of the original core by this name which, like the other 2 new cores, are second-gen v9-based components. Therefore, the OEM argues that it can round a processor design out while still using all-new silicon, and with yet more power saved to boot, to the tune of up to 5%.

All in all, the Cortex-X3, A715 and refreshed A510 are now touted as ideal candidates for a client's next chip. To this end, ARM asserts that a processor made of 8 X3 and 4 A715s can deliver up to 120% more perfornance compared to any old 1 Cortex-X2+3 Cortex-A710+ 4 Cortex-A510 counterpart. Impressive estimations, although potential real-world examples such as the 8 Gen 2 might prove the truth of these claims.

New slides for the new ARM cores. (Source: ARM)
New slides for the new ARM cores. (Source: ARM)

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2022 06 > ARM unveils the Cortex-X3, A715 and A510 Refresh as its latest CPU cores to make mobile devices faster, yet more economical
Deirdre O'Donnell, 2022-06-30 (Update: 2022-06-30)