ARM's Cortex-A75 and A55 cores are ready to power next-gen phones

ARM's latest processors are built for machine learning and artificial intelligence.

ARM has unveiled its next-generation CPU cores, the Cortex-75 and the Cortex-A55. The Cortex-A75 will be aimed at the premium segment while the Cortex-A55 core will cater to the mid-range category.

The company is touting "ground-breaking performance" from the Cortex-A75 core, which delivers a 20% uptick in single-threaded performance from the A73. The A75 will be able to deliver up to 50% more performance in multithreaded use cases, with ARM focusing on artificial intelligence and machine learning. The core also offers 16% more memory throughput, as well as a 30% increase in performance on large-screen devices.

The cores are the first to be built on ARM's DynamicIQ platform, a more flexible and scalable solution to heterogeneous computing. DynamicIQ allows vendors greater freedom in choosing the cores — including a 1+7 configuration where a single Cortex-A75 core is paired to seven A55 cores. Chipset makers can also use a 4+4, 2+6, 1+3, or other configurations in a single cluster, giving them the ability to maximize the performance or deliver an SoC that's geared for efficiency.

The A53 core is used in a wide spectrum of devices today, from the $85 Moto G4 Play to the $400 Moto Z Play. Over 1.5 billion devices are powered by the Cortex-A53 core, making it ARM's most successful processor to date.

The Cortex-A55 is its long-awaited successor, offering a 15% increase in energy efficiency, double the memory performance, and ten times the scalability of the A53. ARM also notes that the core can deliver a similar amount of performance as the A53 while consuming 30% less energy in "designs where power is more important than performance." More importantly, the Cortex-A55 is able to deliver sustained performance for a lot longer than the A53, making it ideal for AR and VR.

ARM rolled out the Bifrost GPU architecture last year with the Mali-G71 GPU, offering significantly increased throughput from the earlier Midgard designs. The Mali-G72 offers incremental updates, including a 20% increase in performance as well as 25% gains in energy efficiency.

In related news, a leak out of China suggests the Snapdragon 845 will be powered by the Cortex-A75 cores. The Snapdragon 835 uses a semi-custom design that features Cortex-A73 cores, so it isn't surprising that next year's SoC will utilize ARM's latest high-performance core. Devices powered by the new processors will be launching sometime in the first quarter of 2018.