ARM holdings, the company behind the mobile processor architecture that powers the iPhone and iPad, unveiled its next generation processor blueprints today that it says will increase performance three fold compared to its current designs.
The new Cortex-A72 chips aimed at smartphone and tablets will make their debut next year — just in time for the iPhone 7 — and also use 75% less power while maintaining the same level of performance as today’s ARM processors, paving the way for thinner, more powerful iPhones in the future.
One of the biggest benefits of the new A72 chips is Apple devices will finally be able to handle complex computing like voice analysis for Siri without having to connect to the Internet, according to ARM’s VP of marketing, Nandan Nayampally. The A72 chips boasts 50 times the computing power compared to mobile processors from five years ago.
ARM’s performance gains come curtesy of changes made to the chip design, while some improvements are due to advances in the production 16-nanometer transistors by manufacturers like TSMC. ARM also announced its updated is Mali graphics technology and the layer than connects the different parts of the processor together.
Rather than manufacturing its own processors like Intel, ARM licenses its chip designs to mobile makers include Apple, Samsung and Qualcomm, who then use the technology for their own processors, such as the new A8 processor. ARM says its already licensed the new chip design to 10 firms, including Rockchop and Mediatek.
Via: Reuters
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
14 responses to “ARM’s new chips will come with 3.5x performance boost”
Since A6 chip Apple is not using cortex architecture why should it change now? It doesn’t make any sense.
iPhones don’t need to be any thinner in my opinion.
iPear, I agree. I think the devices are thin enough, maybe too thin. I’d rather see greater battery capacity and longer battery life than thinner devices. If they make them any thinner you’re just going to see a revisit of the bogus “Bendgate” drama.
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In fact, I would like to see them a bit chubbier. They’re starting to look like sheets of paper.
75% less power consumption and 3.5x more powerful? Can’t deny it, I’m excited
For all practical purposes, does a smartphone really require that type of processing power except for games? There should also be a practical limit for how thin a smartphone needs to be before it gets difficult or uncomfortable to hold. I’m also in favor a greater battery life instead of holding a razor blade, but I know Apple is going to go thinner to save on raw materials. Other than that there doesn’t seem to be any requests from most consumers to have a thinner smartphone. Apple isn’t going to be able to go thinner than some Android manufacturer who just wants to claim they have the thinnest smartphone in the world and only sells a handful of them.
I agree. the iPhone is getting too thin now and surely the next iPhone can’t be any thinner probably not but iPhone 7 will be “thinner and lighter” than the current iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
Look a phone can’t get any thinner than 3.5mm due to the headphone jack, so 4mm is pretty much the limit
No, but dont you want to run crysis on a 5w android box?
As another poster already pointed out, Apple’s current A8 processor is not the same at all as ARM’s A72 predecessor – so how could you possibly tell that it would get the same performance boost if the A8’s ARM-based parts were replaced with an ARM72-based one?
It could be faster.
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