New chip generation: ARM promises massive performance increase
ARM's new Cortex-X925 computing core will be used in smartphones and notebooks in the future. Nvidia could also use it in processors.
Arm Cortex-X925
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The chip designer ARM presents its new architecture generation for ARM processors. The CPU cores are given a new nomenclature and are said to be significantly faster than the previous Cortex-X4. Which is surprising given the ongoing AI hype: ARM is still not licensing a standard design for an AI accelerator that would be powerful enough for modern smartphones or notebooks.
The successor to the Cortex-X4 is now called Cortex-X925 (and not X5), also known as Blackhawk, and ARM is thus adapting the nomenclature to the performance and efficiency cores of the A series. ARM is following the industry trend and increasing the caches – here significantly the level 2 stage with up to 3 MByte per core. The Cortex-X925 is designed for 3-nanometer processes and should achieve high clock frequencies of up to 3.8 GHz with good implementations. By comparison, the Cortex-X4 in the fastest processors reaches 3.4 GHz, such as Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and the Plus version of Mediatek's Dimensity 9300.
According to ARM, the improvements should bring the biggest leap in performance from one generation to the next that has ever been achieved. In the Geekbench benchmark, the Cortex-X925 in the version with the largest cache is said to be 36 percent faster than a Cortex-X4. Calculations of AI algorithms on the CPU are said to run 50 percent faster. Other comparisons are flawed because ARM has two Cortex-X925s in the current reference design, but only one Cortex-X4 in the previous one.
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In addition to smartphones and tablets, the Cortex-X925 will also power notebooks in the future. In the highest configuration level, up to twelve of the prime cores can be used in one processor.
Also new is the somewhat weaker Cortex-A725, which has four cores in ARM's reference design. The core is also designed for 3 nm processes and the L2 cache is doubled to 1 MByte. Compared to the Cortex-A720, ARM promises up to 35 percent more performance and a 25 percent increase in energy efficiency, depending on the application.
ARM's weakest core is not completely new, but only slightly improved, and has therefore not been given a new model number. The Cortex-A520 is still responsible for light tasks in the background and should take up as little chip area as possible in the processor. It has not learned any new tricks. ARM claims to have improved energy efficiency by up to 15 percent through optimizations.
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New Immortalis and Mali GPUs
The new GPU from ARM is called Immortalis-G925. The main performance drivers are games and AI tasks, but the two areas are increasingly overlapping. ARM is also promising a significant performance boost of up to 37 percent – compared to the previous Immortalis-G720 for ray tracing graphic effects. The 30 percent reduction in electrical power consumption in "leading games" probably only refers to the same fps values with a frame limiter. Generally speaking, however, the comparisons are also flawed here because ARM compares an Immortalis-G925 with 14 shader clusters ("GPU cores") with an Immortalis-G720 with 12 clusters.
The maximum possible configuration increases from 16 to 24 shader clusters, so that greater performance gains are possible at the peak if the electrical power consumption or temperatures are not limiting.
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The two weaker GPUs Mali-G725 and Mali-G625 come without ray tracing support and with fewer computing cores. They are intended for devices with lower performance where gaming performance is secondary. The Mali-G725 is to be used in entry-level and mid-range smartphones; licensees can configure it with six to nine cores. The Mali-G625 is more likely to be used in wearables such as smartwatches; it has one to five cores.
Despite all the touted AI capabilities, there is still no place for a dedicated AI computing unit in ARM's design. So far, the processor designers have flanged such a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) to the Cortex cores and the other components of the System-on-Chip (SoC) themselves. When asked about this, ARM spokespersons replied that they are generally not against NPUs. However, at least 70 percent of applications would only use the CPU to calculate AI anyway, plus the GPU with additional capacities. The company believes it is well equipped for all standard tasks. However, if a processor designer wants to expand their architecture with an NPU for special tasks, this is still possible.
When will the first chips of the new generation be available?
In principle, the new chip designs are available to companies immediately. The two chip contract manufacturers Samsung and TSMC are said to already be familiar with the core designs. A new high-end processor from Mediatek, which could include the Cortex-X925, is expected in the fall. Google, on the other hand, is lagging behind – the Tensor G4 is rumored to be switching from the Cortex-X3 to the -X4 for the time being. Another possible customer would be Nvidia, which may design its own notebook ARM processors.
A look at Qualcomm should be particularly interesting: The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 expected at the end of October is expected to switch from ARM's standard to its own Oryon cores. It is hardly surprising that, unlike in previous years, ARM avoided the name Qualcomm like the devil avoids holy water when presenting the new cores.
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