Arm has just published a roadmap for their Cortex-A processors until 2020, where we can see 7nm Deimos, and 7 to 5 nm Hercules succeeding Arm Cortex A76 core with “laptop class performance” announced last spring. For reference, an Arm Cortex A76 @ 3 GHz is said to outperform an Intel Core i5-7300U (15W TDP) processor at a lower power envelop.
The two new Cortex-A cores will offer better better performance, will be launched in 2019 and 2020respectively, and as we’ll see below Arm expects those core to outperform Intel Core i5 processors.
Current Arm laptop based on Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 have generally been disappointing in terms of performance, especially considering the prices those are sold for, but after a big jump on performance for Cortex A76 cores, Arm expects a 15% increase in compute performance per year. Hercules is expected to be around 2.5 times faster than current Arm Cortex A72/A73 cores.
The chart also shows a faster progression of Arm cores against Intel 15W TDP parts, although what the latter plans to launch by 2020 is not represented in the chart. We’ll have to wait and see.
All new cores from Cortex-A76 to Hercules target SoCs for devices with always-on always-connected 5G connectivity. There should be around a one year delay between a processor launch, and actual product launches. So we can expect Deimos based laptops in 2020, and Hercules devices one year later. We’ll also have to wait longer before getting some technical details about Deimos and Hercules cores.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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