New ARM Chips Offer More Power, Native 4K Support

To better serve us well into the future of mobile, ARM is announcing new chipsets that will likely be found in handsets for years to come. The new ARM Cortex A72 is a "50X increase in CPU performance", while the CoreLink CCI-500 allows higher bandwidth and increased efficiency. ARM's new Mali T880 GPU promises "console-quality" games via mobile devices. ARM also says big-name chipset manufacturers like HiSilicon, Rockchip, and MediaTek have already signed on to include the A72 in their SoCs.

The Cortex A72 is a 64-bit chipset, but is also reverse compatible to 32-bit. Among the flashier promises ARM is making is video, where the A72 can shoot 4K video at 120fps. That's a 4X uptick on current devices, which typically capture 4K video at 30fps.

That 50-times power uptick is based on devices form five years ago. For a more modern idea of what you'll get, it's 3.5-times faster than the Cortex A15, which is found on Samsung's Galaxy S5.

ARM's Mali T880 GPU measures at nearly 2-times the performance of modern GPUs. Further highlighting ARM's new direction, the Mali also supports 4K. Both benefit from ARM's 16nm FinFET+ process, which makes both more compact and long-lasting. ARM is also saying the chipsets offer 75% more efficiency when "matching performance" to existing chipsets. They didn't qualify that statement, but sounds as though they are referring to clocking, not tasks.

Don't expect this on your next smartphone, though (unless you just bought one). ARM says their new hardware will "enable a new standard for premium experiences on 2016 mobile devices."

Source: ARM