Chip-technology designer ARM, Ltd. has launched its latest A-series processor for mobile devices, the Cortex-A15 MPCore ‘Eagle”, which promises 1.5GHz dual-core power for future mobile devices — in raw numbers, a five times performance increase over current smartphones is touted. Designed with fabrication geometries as low as 20 nanometers in mind, A15-based products promise to deliver performance benefits over a number of device categories (even higher clock-speed, multi-core arrangements are possible in servers, home entertainment gear, and wireless infrastructure), while maintaining similar heat footprints and energy requirements to today’s processors.
The Cortex-A15 family follows the Cortex-A9 processor from ARM, which we most recently saw being utilized in Samsung’s next-generation of 1GHz dual-core chips, the Orion. Samsung currently uses ARM Cortex-A8 architecture in its Hummingbird CPU, which can be found in its own Galaxy S line of handsets. This newest model was reportedly designed with close input from Samsung, naturally, along with Texas Instruments and ST-Ericsson, all companies which will eventually license the architecture for use in their own products.
This news comes on the heels of an announcement by Qualcomm that its own upcoming 1.5GHz dual-core CPU, the Snapdragon QSD8672, won’t be shipping in products until the end of 2011 — although we should allegedly see devices sporting the company’s 1.2GHz dual-core piece hitting the market “early next year.”
