Every year around this time, British technology company Arm introduces the next generation of ARM-based processors, and this year is no different. Today, the company introduced the Cortex-A78 CPU and the Mali-G78 GPU, but the most interesting announcement might be the Cortex-X custom program.
Starting with the Cortex-A78, it"s the sort of upgrade you"d expect at this point, with Arm calling it the most efficient Cortex-A CPU ever. It promises a 20% increase in sustained performance over the Cortex-A77, which is found on most flagship phones this year, and it does so without using significantly more power. Arm says the chip will enable "multi-day, immersive 5G experiences".
If that"s not enough, though, Arm is introducing a brand new line of Cortex CPUs, called Cortex-X. The goal with Cortex-X is to allow manufacturers to customize the processor in more ways, potentially enabling some of these solutions to go even further in performance. The first CPU in this line is the Cortex-X1, and Arm says it"s the most powerful Cortex CPU ever, promising a 30% increase in peak performance over the Cortex-A77.
Moving on to GPUs, there"s the new Mali-G78, the second generation of GPUs based on the company"s Valhall architecture. Arm says the new GPU promises 25% more performance compared to last year"s offering, which is significant considering that GPU already offered a 40% increase in performance over the previous generation. The new Mali-G78 GPU supports up to 24 cores, and Arm says it"s also more efficient and could deliver better battery life.
Arm is also introducing a sub-premium line of GPUs, starting with the new Mali-G68. It supports up to 8 cores and has all of the enhancements of the Mali-G78, which include improved tilers, asynchronous top level, and improved fragment dependency tracking.
Finally, there"s a new Neural Processing Unit, or NPU, the Ethos-N78. It promises enhanced on-device machine learning and up to a 25% improvement in performance efficiency. It"s also configurable, with configurations ranging from 1 TOP/s to 10 TOP/s.
The new products should be at the heart of flagship phones in 2021.