ARM Announces New Cortex-A35 CPU - Ultra-High Efficiency For Wearables & More
... as part of the volley of announcements at ARM's TechCon conference we discover ARM's new low-power application-tier CPU architecture, the Cortex-A35. [...] As such, the A35 is targeted at power targets below ~125mW where the Cortex A7 and A5 are still very commonly used. To give us an idea of what to expect from actual silicon, ARM shared with us a figure of 90mW at 1GHz on a 28nm manufacturing process. Of course the A35 will see a wide range of implementations on different process nodes such as for example 14/16nm or at much higher clock rates above 2GHz, similar to how we've come to see a wide range of process and frequency targets for the A53 today.
Most importantly, the A35 now completes ARM's ARMv8 processor portfolio with designs covering the full range of power and efficiency targets. The A35 can also be used in conjunction with A72/A57/A53 cores in big.LITTLE systems, enabling for some very exotic configurations (A true tri-cluster comes to mind) depending if vendors see justification in implementing such SoCs.
ARM Announces ARMv8-M Instruction Set For Microcontrollers – TrustZone Comes to Cortex-M
Previously only available to ARM-A architecture CPUs, TrustZone is now being extended to ARM based microcontrollers. And like their bigger siblings, ARM's aim here with TrustZone is to lay the groundwork for their customers to build highly secure devices, for all the benefits and drawbacks such a device entails. This includes protecting cryptography engines and certain stored assets (e.g. the secure enclave) against attack, locking down systems to prevent userland applications from breaking into the operating system itself, and various degrees of DRM (one example, as ARM gives is, is firmware IP protection).
Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Experience: HMP Kryo and Demos
In power, Qualcomm published a slide showing average power consumption using their own internal model for determining days of use. In their testing, it shows that Snapdragon 820 uses 30% less power for the same time of use. Of course, this needs to be taken with appropriate skepticism, but given the use of 14LPP it probably shouldn't be a surprise that Snapdragon 820 improves significantly over past devices. The other disclosures of note were primarily centered on the CPU and modem. On the modem side, Qualcomm is claiming 15% improvement in power efficiency which should eliminate any remaining gap between LTE and WiFi battery life.
Imagination Announces New P6600, M6200, M6250 Warrior CPUs
Starting off with the P6600, this is Imagination's new MIPS flagship core succeeding the P5600. The P5600 was a 3-wide out-of-order design with a pipeline depth of up to 16 stages. The P6600 keeps most of the predecessor's characteristics such as the main architectural features or full hardware virtualization and security through OmniShield, but adds compatibility for MIPS64 64-bit processing on top. Imagination first introduced a mobile oritented 64-bit MIPS CPU back with the I6400 a little more than a year ago but we've yet to see vendors announce products with it.
Related Stories
Wave Computing Adopts Low Power MIPS 64-bit Multi-Threaded Core
Wave Computing [...] announced today that it has selected a 64-bit Multi-Threaded processor core from MIPS Technologies for future AI solutions. Wave will use the MIPS core in its next generation of Dataflow Processing Unit (DPU) chips that will ship in Wave's future deep learning systems to handle device control functions including management of the real-time operating system (RTOS) and system-on-chip (SoC) subsystem.
As design complexity and software footprints continue to increase, the 64-bit MIPS architecture is being used in an even broader set of datacenter, connected consumer devices, networking products, and emerging AI applications. In addition to Wave, companies including Mobileye, Fungible, ThinCI, and DENSO, among others, are using the MIPS 64-bit processor core as they develop ground-breaking AI applications. [...] Last August, Denso group company NSITEXE, Inc. announced that it licensed the newest MIPS CPU to drive enhanced in-vehicle electronic processing.
Related: MIPS Strikes Back: 64-bit Warrior I6400 Arrives
PEZY's Next Many-Core Chip Will Include a MIPS 64-Bit CPU
ARM Cortex-A35, Snapdragon 820, and New Imagination MIPS Processors
Linux-Based, MIPS-Powered Russian All-in-One PC Launched
Imagination Technologies Acquired for $675 Million, MIPS to be Sold Off
(Score: 4, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday November 24 2015, @08:31PM
Yippie.
I think you accidently a "benefits".
IP protection, DRM and certain "Stored assets". Meaning, further locking users out of their own hardware to prevent rooting and possibly sideloading. Mobile can go fuck itself with a barbed wire wrapped, nail and stable covered, creosote soaked telephone pole... sideways. Nothing like a device that can barely do anything useful besides poorly surf the web, play music, run brain dead fremium/ad supported games, live vicariously through others on social media or any number of other lame activities.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 25 2015, @01:58AM
You have good hate, but use it with poor aim.
Don't hate security, and the features that enable it. Instead hate the people who decided you are locked out instead of the holder of the key. My understanding on arm trust zone doesn't imply it being evil: Genode (my favorite secure micro kernel based OS) seems to make fine use of it for their user benefiting purposes: http://genode.org/documentation/articles/trustzone [genode.org]
Don't hate mobile (Or Arm): instead hate Apple, Google, Microsoft and what ever other stupid OS vendors are out there selling locked boxes without the keys. Such security mechanism's are fine, important even; its the policies these shitty companies are imposing on us that are horrible.
Trust zone also isn't like Intel's creepy management/malware/below firmware attack vector. Its not all that different from classic kernel mode.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Sunday November 29 2015, @11:59PM
No, my aim is just fine. We can argue all day about the merits and benefits of things like secure boot, EFI, Trust Zone, CPU Serial numbers, TPM's, and other trojan horse technologies. The bottom line is they will be abused by the companies that peddle them in the guise of good will and faith (yes, I'm being that dramatic).
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday November 24 2015, @10:26PM
Quick, someone please write more spying/advertising/animations code to make sure that people's batteries do not exceed a day!
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Wednesday November 25 2015, @01:33AM
+1 sad but true
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 25 2015, @06:54AM
Turning off both the cellular and WiFi (and bluetooth) radios helps.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday November 25 2015, @12:23PM
while (send_data(private_shit) != SUCCESS) { sleep(0.1); }
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by Guppy on Wednesday November 25 2015, @04:12PM
Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Experience: HMP Kryo and Demos
Also the first commercially available mobile phone chipset to support LTE-U, which is LTE on unlicensed spectrum (except for a small control channel on licensed frequencies).
LTE Over Wi-Fi Spectrum Sets Up Industry-wide Fight Over Interference [soylentnews.org]