ARM’s Cortex-A72 CPU core gets fully detailed

The chipmaker ARM spilled all the beans on the recently announced, high-end Cortex-A72 CPU. As expected, the component is faster, more efficient, with a smaller footprint than the Cortex-A57 that precedes it.

ARM Cortex-A72 offers 20% better branch prediction than its predecessor. Instructions-per-clock have increased between 20% and 60% over the Cortex-A57 depending on the workload. In terms of energy efficiency, the newcomer is between 18% and 30% better than the previous model.

It has been primarily designed for next-generation 14nm and 16nm nodes, though Mediatek and Qualcomm will bring 28nm chipsets with the CPU this year. It is worth noting that the Cortex-A72 offers much bigger gains in performance on 14nm and 16nm nodes.

Interestingly, ARM claims that, at the same performance, the Cortex-A72 will use 75% less power than an Inter Broadwell CPU. It is worth noting that Intel’s chip is overall significantly more powerful.

Source