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ARM’s 64-bit Cortex-A57 taped-out

by Mark Tyson on 2 April 2013, 15:30

Tags: TSMC, ARM

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ARM and TSMC have today announced the first tape-out of the 64-bit ARM Cortex-A57 processor. The new ARM processor will be the company’s highest performing processor and is hoped to extend its reach to include high-end computer, tablet and server products. ARM and TSMC have spent six months working together to ready the new chip and now it has reached this tape-out milestone the Cortex-A57 will be optimised for TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process.

ARM HQ

Tom Cronk, executive vice president and general manager, Processor Division, ARM said “This first ARM Cortex-A57 processor implementation paves the way for our mutual customers to leverage the performance and power efficiency of 16nm FinFET technology.” He also stated that “The joint effort of ARM, TSMC, and TSMC’s OIP design ecosystem partners demonstrates the strong commitment to provide industry-leading technology for customer designs to benefit from our latest 64-bit ARMv8 architecture, big.LITTLE™ processing and ARM POP™ IP across a wide variety of market segments.”

TSMC HQ

TSMC Vice President of R&D, Dr. Cliff Hou, also sounded pretty chipper about achieving the tape-out milestone; “This achievement demonstrates that the next-generation ARMv8 processor is FinFET-ready for TSMC’s advanced technology.”

From content consumption to content creation

The new Cortex-A57 processor is expected to provide a big jump in performance and tread soundly into desktop processor territory. ARM suggests that a Cortex-A57 powered smartphone equipped with wireless screen, keyboard and mouse will be able to provide the “full laptop experience that consumers receive from their typical laptop today”. Furthermore it will “deliver all the compute capability a typical consumer needs, from replacing your gaming console to your laptop in innovative portable form factors”.

There was no specific date projected for when we might see Cortex-A57 processors or computing devices using these processors on the market. However, while you wait, you can read quite a lot of details about the processor already on ARM’s Cortex-A57 microsite.



HEXUS Forums :: 3 Comments

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Owwww. Snake pass :P
Great to see innovation, whatever field it may be, cant wait for this :)
Arm HQ photo looks more like a school…