Arm Unveils 2023 Mobile CPU Core Designs: Cortex-X4, A720, and A520 - the Armv9.2 Family

Throughout the world, if there's one universal constant in the smartphone and mobile device market, it's Arm. Whether it's mobile chip makers basing their SoCs on Arm's fully synthesized CPU cores, or just relying on the Arm ISA and designing their own chips, at the end of the day, Arm underlies virtually all of it. That kind of market saturation and relevance is a testament to all of the hard work that Arm has done in the last few decades getting to this point, but it's also a grave responsibility – for most mobile SoCs, their performance only moves forward as quickly as Arm's own CPU core designs and associated IP do.

Consequently, we've seen Arm settle into a yearly cadence for their client IP, and this year is no exception. Timed to align with this year's Computex trade show in Taiwan, Arm is showing off a new set of Cortex-A and Cortex-X series CPU cores – as well as a new generation of GPU designs – which we'll see carrying the torch for Arm starting later this year and into 2024. These include the flagship Cortex-X4 core, as well as Arm's mid-core Cortex-A720. and the new little-core Cortex-A520.

Arm's latest CPU cores build upon the foundation of Armv9 and their Total Compute Solution (TSC21/22) ecosystem. For their 2023 IP, Arm is rolling out a wave of minor microarchitectural improvements through its Cortex line of cores with subtle changes designed to push efficiency and performance throughout, all the while moving entirely to the AArch64 64-bit instruction set. The latest CPU designs from Arm are also designed to align with the ongoing industry-wide drive towards improved security, and while these features aren't strictly end-user facing, it does underscore how Arm's generational improvements are to more than just performance and power efficiency.

In addition to refining its CPU cores, Arm has undertaken a comprehensive upgrade of its DynamIQ Shared Unit core complex block, with the DSU-120. Although the modifications introduced are subtle, they hold substantial significance in terms of improving the efficiency of the fabric holding Arm CPU cores together, along with extending Arm's reach even further in terms of performance scalability with support for up to 14 CPU cores in a single block – a move designed to make Cortex-A/X even better suited for laptops.

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