ARM Cortex-A78 CPU and Mali-G78 GPU will power 2021 flagship smartphones

During the 2020 TechDay event, ARM announced two new CPU microarchitectures — Cortex-A78 and Cortex-X1 CPU for flagship performance design. Along with that, the company has also introduced a new Mali-G78 GPU.

So, it’s safe to assume that the next-generation flagship smartphones getting launched in 2021 will have ARM Cortex-A78 CPU and Mali-G78 GPU. For those who are unaware, chipset makers like Qualcomm, Huawei, Samsung, etc. use designs created by ARM to make their own SoCs that powers all the smartphones.

ARM says that the newly announced Cortex-A78 CPU core design is “unquestionably our most efficient Cortex-A CPU ever designed for mobile.” It is claimed to offer a 20 percent increase in performance compared to last year’s Cortex-A77 design while staying within a 1-watt power budget.

The new Cortex-A78 pretty much continues Arm’s traditional design philosophy on balance between performance, power, and area (PPA). ARM has a track record of being able to provide competitive performance with low power consumption and small die areas.

The company has also introduced a new Cortex-A custom program. With this, its partners can create their own specialized Cortex CPU in conjunction with ARM for their specific purposes beyond the stock Cortex-A78. The first of those chips is the ARM Cortex-X1.

The ARM Cortex-X1 will offer up to a 30 percent peak performance improvements over the Cortex-A77. The “Cortex-X Custom Program” is an evolution of “Built on Arm Cortex Technology” program that enabled customers to collaborate early in the design phase of a new microarchitecture, and request customizations to the configurations, such as a larger ROB, differently tuned prefetchers, or interface customizations for better integrations.

Besides new CPU designs, the company has also introduced a pair of new mobile GPUs — Mali-G78 and Mali-G68. While the G78 GPU is aimed at flagship smartphones, the G68 is meant for offering similar performance at a more affordable price point.

The new Mali-G78 supports 24 cores, up from 16, and the company promises that it will enable up to 25 percent increase in graphics performance compared to last year’s Mali-G77. ARM has also announced a new Ethos-N78 neural processing unit (NPU) which is promised to offer up to 25 percent improved performance efficiency over the Ethos-N77.

The Mali-G68 is the company’s first GPU targeted at the “sub-premium” market. It retains the FMA, dependency tracking, and tiler improvements from the G78 and comes with Asynchronous Top Level clock speed control. However, this budget GPU only scales between one and six cores.

ALWAYS BE THE FIRST TO KNOW - FOLLOW US!