Arm launches "laptop-class" Cortex-A76 CPU

by Mark Tyson on 1 June 2018, 10:11

Tags: ARM

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A few hours ago Arm launched its latest premium CPU and GPU. The new parts are said to be able to deliver "laptop-class performance", plus "high-end gaming on the go" augmented by smarter experiences and improved battery life.

Headline claims for the Cortex-A76 is that it provides a performance uplift of 35 per cent over the current generation, which Arm asserts makes a real-world difference to the tasks it can perform. Additionally there is an impressive 40 per cent uplift in power efficiency, helping provide users with longer battery life. Like the previous A75, the new CPU is based upon the DynamIQ technology and big.LITTLE combination.

In its blog post about the new Cortex-A76, Arm mentions laptops quite a few times and even provides slides showing 'laptop performance'. So it is obvious that Arm is eyeing a new generation of Connected PCs, tablets and similar from Microsoft, and perhaps Google. Microsoft Office is specifically mentioned as "providing a much faster, smoother user experience," with the new processor.

Arm highlights the fact that it could easily ramp up performance if energy efficiency wasn't a concern but it has still managed to "bridge the performance gap without compromising on efficiency". For those interested in the nuts and bolts of the new architecture, more information about the Cortex-A76 is available both on the blog and official product pages.

The Arm Mali-G76 GPU continues the refinement of the Bifrost architecture. Performance gains between generations are still very impressive with Arm's processors with "a whopping 30 per cent more performance density and 30 per cent more energy efficiency" delivered by this GPU. Thanks to the speed increase the Mali-G76 is capable of "high end gaming on the go", and allows you to enjoy games and entertainment for longer.

Key to the new performance heights is the "wide execution engine," claims Arm, as well as a dual texture mapper, preloading optimisations, and cache improvements.

Both the new CPU and GPU designs offer significant machine learning performance gains compared to previous gen parts and Arm suggests that are combined with the Mali-V76 premium VPU and Mali-D71 DPU in premium laptop-style and smartphone devices.



HEXUS Forums :: 4 Comments

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Article keeps mentioning A57 instead of A76.

I read elsewhere that this CPU can run 32 bit application code but not OS kernel code. The move away from 32 bits has started!
Apparently there is an ARM based Macbook in the works:

https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20180529PD211.html
CAT-THE-FIFTH
Apparently there is an ARM based Macbook in the works:

https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20180529PD211.html

Those rumours have been around for so long. I suspect Apple cores are already faster than this A76 though, so I think the rumours keep popping up because it sort of makes sense.

I presume these cores are more aimed at consoles, chromebooks and VR headsets. My wife is loving her A72 based Android tablet, the extra grunt compared to her old Atom based tablet certainly helps.

Windows has been on every major CPU architecture out there at some point, but it always gets dropped by MS after a few years so I can't see anyone trusting them enough to develop Windows hardware.
Apple cores are quicker single-threaded and tend to be aimed at that opposed to a move to multi-threaded performance. Samsung has also done this with the last couple of Exynos processors because you can see the performance straight away under many circumstances using iOS and Android. This is one reason why battery life hasn't jumped as much as many had hoped with the move to smaller process nodes as the cpu's are still running high frequencies most of the time. Apple even moved to a co-processor to help with this