Arm Targets Laptop Performance

Cortex-A76 mobile core aimed at Intel’s Skylake

Rick Merritt, EETimes
5/31/2018 03:00 PM EDT

AUSTIN, Texas — Arm announced a new mobile CPU core that it said can deliver performance within 10% of Intel’s latest Skylake chips. Analysts praised the architecture’s leap forward but said that they doubt Arm will take a significant share of today’s x86-based notebooks.

The Cortex-A76 arrives in tandem with new Mali G76 GPU and V76 video cores. All three are expected to appear in premium smartphone SoCs before the end of the year.

The A76 marks a full redesign for mobile systems, packing up to 2-Mbytes L2 cache, 4-Mbytes L3, and running at more than 3 GHz in a 7-nm node. It aims to deliver 90% of the Specint2006 performance of an Intel mobile Skylake chip with one-fourth the area and half the power — or roughly the same performance in thermally constrained systems.

“We’re looking to close the gap with Intel … this marks the first step in a new family, and it’s the biggest leap we’ve taken in our roadmap,” said Mike Filippo, an Arm fellow and lead architect for the A76.

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