ARM Announces Cortex-A12 processor, Mali-T622 GPU and Mali-V500 VPU

Right before Computer 2013, ARM has made a single announcement for 4 new products for smartphones: Cortex A12 core, Mali-T622 GPU, Mali-V500 video processor unit, and POP IP technology.

Cortex A12 processor, with 40 percent more performance than Cortex-A9, positions itself between Cortex A9 and A15 offerings, and brings virtualization, big.LITTLE processing, and up to 1TB addressable memory to mid-range devices. Combined with the new Mali-T622 GPU, it will offer GPU Compute and OpenGL 3.0 solution. Add the new Mali-V500 video IP solution to complete the SoC for tomorrow’s, 2015 more exactly, mid-range smartphones and tablets between $200 and  $350.

Cortex A12 will have the following key features:

• Architecture – ARMv7-A Cortex
• Multicore – 1-4X SMP within a single processor cluster
• Multiple coherent processor clusters through AMBA 4 technology
• Support ARM Thumb-2
• TrustZone security technology
• NEON Advanced SIMD
• DSP & SIMD extensions
• VFPv4 Floating point
• Hardware virtualization support
• Large Physical Address Extensions (LPAE)
• Memory Management – ARMv7 Memory Management Unit
• Debug and Trace – CoreSight SoC-400

Further information is available on Cortex A12 page.

Mali-T622 GPU is OpenGL ES 3.0 and DirectX 11conformant, supports the Renderscript and OpenCL 1.1 APIs, and is the smallest full profile GPU Compute solution available for mobile devices. It provides a 50 percent energy-efficiency improvement over first-generation Mali-T600 series products.

You can learn more on Mali-T622 page.

Mali-V500 video solution provides dedicated video processing and reduces system bandwidth requirements by more than 50 percent compared to currently available solutions. It can scale from one core capable of 1080p/60 encode and decode to up to 8 cores supporting ultra-high definition 4K at a 120 frames per second. Mali-V500 supports TrustZone security technology to enable hardware-backed security for movie and TV content.

Visit Mali-V500 page for details.

Beside CPU, GPU and VPU announcement, ARM also announced POP IP (Processor Optimization Pack) which supports 28-nanometer foundry processes, and aims at optimizing power, performance and die area for ARM processors. It is available for both Cortex A12 CPU and Mali-T622 GPU from TMSC 28HPM processor, and will be for GlobalFoundries 28-SLP process in Q4 2013. You can find more information on ARM POP IP page.

ARM DS-5 toolchain already supports development and optimization of software for systems based on the Cortex-A12 processor, Mali-T622 GPU, and CoreLink CCI-400 cache coherent interconnect, and while silicon is not available, development can be performed on ARM Fast Models simulation library.

Several companies have already licensed Cortex A12 technology including VIA.

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