ARM detail new Cortex-A15 core processor design

Think your shiny new device with an Apple A4, a Sammy Hummingbird or Qualcomm Snapdragon is powerful? Well ARM are back once again to restore that feeling of inadequacy with the ridiculous new ‘Eagle’ SoC; the Cortex A15. Capable of up to 2.5GHz speeds, address up to a terabyte of memory, and with 4 cores (four!) the A15’s 32nm and 28nm fabrication means that these potent little chips are also more power efficient. Sadly, A15’s destined for smartphones will most probably be ‘only’ single or dual core versions at ‘only’ 1 to 1.5GHz. The faster quad-core versions mark ARM’s intentions to break into a bigger market, as these are destined for tablets, cars, set-top boxes and even small servers. It doesn’t stop there either – versions with eight cores or more are possible, though they would only live in enterprise infrastructure solutions. The named licensees so far include Texas Instruments, Samsung and ST Ericsson.

Now all we need are super-batteries to juice these up.

Posted by: Vince