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Apple chip partner ARM debuts 16nm Cortex-A72 with better speed, power consumption

ARM A72

ARM, the British processor designer responsible for the core chip technology found inside many of Apple’s past iOS devices, today announced the Cortex-A72 — its latest mobile CPU design, designed to run at up to 2.5GHz and improve the processing power of next-generation smartphones. Combined with an enhanced graphics chip such as ARM’s Mali-T880, the new CPU promises to enable upcoming phones to offer “console-class gaming performance,” up to 120fps 4K video capture, and natural language user interfaces.

The Cortex-A72 is built on 16-nanometer technology, and promises to deliver either a 75% improvement in energy efficiency or roughly three times the performance of recent Cortex-A15 devices, depending on how a chip built with Cortex-A72 technology is designed to operate. Chips containing Cortex-A72 are expected to be in phones by 2016, as licensees are already in the process of incorporating the new design into their next-generation processors.

ARM A72

It should be noted that Apple’s reliance on ARM has changed over the years, most notably when Apple released the A6 — a custom chip design based on the ARMv7 instruction set — followed by the A7 and A8 series chips, which used 64-bit ARMv8 instructions but not ARM’s standard Cortex-series processors or Mali-series GPUs. Consequently, it’s unclear whether anything from the Cortex-A72 will make it into Apple’s A9 or A10 processors, but the 2:1 or 3:1 improvements in performance hint at what Apple will likely accomplish with similarly smaller, cooler-running chips.

Prior reports have suggested that Apple’s chip partner TSMC was working on a 16-nanometer A9 processor that would start production in 2015 for release later this year, though subsequent reports have suggested that Samsung is developing an even smaller, 14-nanometer processor for Apple. Smaller nanometer numbers typically indicate more efficient chip performance.

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Comments

  1. monty72 - 9 years ago

    All sounds a bit RISCy to me

  2. luckydcxx - 9 years ago

    A9 in iPhone 6S

  3. Mosha - 9 years ago

    Console quality! Haven’t heard that one used before…

    • repentantgamer - 9 years ago

      I hope the console they’re referring to isn’t the NES. :-P

      • J.latham - 9 years ago

        I would love some NES quality games to come out again. Most of the best games were made for NES. ;)

  4. Edward Lee - 9 years ago

    FinFET is TSMC’s technology and patent, but Apple is purchase chip from Samsung. What is this? Is that mean I can copy IOS and everything from Apple, too? iOS base iTomato phone? I can also have iTurn? iPaper? iWorking?