ARM holdings, the company behind the mobile processor architecture that powers the iPhone and iPad, have just revealed its latest chip design. Dubbed the ARM Cortex A72, the new reference chip is claimed to sport twice the performance of its Cortex A57 chip, as well as 3.5 times the performance of 2014’s Cortex A15. Additionally, ARM says the new design also reduces energy consumption by 75 percent over last year’s devices.
The super-efficient Cortex-A72 chips, aimed at smartphone and tablets, will make their debut next year, paving the way for thinner, more powerful iPhones in the future. The new processors can record 4K video at 120fps, when most of today’s devices cannot exceed 30fps. ARM claims an overall 50 times performance bump over leading smartphones from five years ago, or 3.5 times that of its Cortex A15 line (as seen in the Galaxy S5). That processing power will be boosted by a new Mali T880 GPU, with which the company claims a “console-like” experience for mobile devices, or 1.8 times the performance of today’s chips.
ARM’s performance gains come courtesy of changes made to the chip design, while some improvements are due to advances in the production 16-nanometer transistors by manufacturers like TSMC. ARM also announced its updated is Mali graphics technology and the layer than connects the different parts of the processor together.
Rather than manufacturing its own processors like Intel, ARM licenses its chip designs to mobile makers include Apple, Samsung and Qualcomm, who then use the technology for their own processors, such as the new A8 processor. ARM says it has already licensed the new chip design to 10 firms, including Rockchop and Mediatek.
