Cortex-A15 is the latest microarchitecture from ARM and byt the end of next year the first system processor with Cortex-A15 inside will arrive in devices near you, ST-Ericsson and TI have presented coming chipsets. In an interview ARM says that Cortex-A15 can now seriously threaten x86 in several areas.
In an interview with TG Daily ARM officer James Bruce points out that Cortex-A15 takes one step closer to the day when ARM system processors can be used to power even your primary system, but that it focuses on complementary products such as smartphones and tables.
“With our upcoming Cortex-A15 processor, we are definitely moving closer to the day when your smartphone or tablet can act as a primary computing device,” Bruce told TG Daily during an interview in San Francisco.
“You can simply hook the smartphone or tablet up to an external monitor to watch a movie and presentation, while linking a mouse and keyboard via Bluetooth to work on an Office doc.”
The focus for ARM is on energy efficienct and Cortex-A15 will be clocked up to 2.5 GHz even though it is an extremely efficient multi-core processor. It will also be scalable to fewer or more cores; e.g. 2, 4 or 8 CPU cores. This fits well with ARM targeting more and wider product areas, from mobile units to printers and servers.
Both Texas Instruments and ST-Ericsson have presented its own design solutions with dual-core Cortex-A15 processors at 2.5 GHz. Retail products with the new architecture is slated for launch in late 2012.
Source: TG Daily
