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Big.LITTLE
ARM big.LITTLE is a heterogeneous computing architecture developed by ARM Holdings, coupling relatively battery-saving and slower processor cores (''LITTLE'') with relatively more powerful and power-hungry ones (''big''). Typically, only one "side" or the other will be active at once, but all cores have access to the same memory regions, so workloads can be swapped between Big and Little cores on the fly. The intention is to create a multi-core processor that can adjust better to dynamic computing needs and use less power than clock scaling alone. ARM's marketing material promises up to a 75% savings in power usage for some activities. Most commonly, ARM big.LITTLE architectures are used to create a multi-processor system-on-chip (MPSoC). In October 2011, big.LITTLE was announced along with the Cortex-A7, which was designed to be architecturally compatible with the Cortex-A15. In October 2012 ARM announced the Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57 (ARMv8-A) cores, which are also interc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exynos
Exynos, formerly Hummingbird (), is a series of ARM-based system-on-chips developed by Samsung Electronics' System LSI division and manufactured by Samsung Foundry. It is a continuation of Samsung's earlier S3C, S5L and S5P line of SoCs. Exynos is mostly based on the ARM Cortex cores with the exception of some high end SoCs which featured Samsung's proprietary "M" series core design; though from 2021 onwards even the flagship high-end SoC's will be featuring ARM Cortex cores. History In 2010, Samsung launched the Hummingbird S5PC110 (now Exynos 3 Single) in its Samsung Galaxy S smartphone, which featured a licensed ARM Cortex-A8 CPU. This ARM Cortex-A8 was code-named Hummingbird. It was developed in partnership with Intrinsity using their FastCore and Fast14 technology. In early 2011, Samsung first launched the Exynos 4210 SoC in its Samsung Galaxy S II mobile smartphone. The driver code for the Exynos 4210 was made available in the Linux kernel and support was added ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore
The ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore is a 32-bit processor core licensed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARMv7-A architecture. It is a multicore processor with out-of-order superscalar pipeline running at up to 2.5 GHz. Overview ARM has claimed that the Cortex-A15 core is 40 percent more powerful than the Cortex-A9 core with the same number of cores at the same speed. The first A15 designs came out in the autumn of 2011, but products based on the chip did not reach the market until 2012. Key features of the Cortex-A15 core are: * 40-bit Large Physical Address Extensions (LPAE) addressing up to 1 TB of RAM. As per the x86 Physical Address Extension, virtual address space remains 32 bit. * 15 stage integer/17–25 stage floating point pipeline, with out-of-order speculative issue 3-way superscalar execution pipeline * 4 cores per cluster, up to 2 clusters per chip with CoreLink 400 (CCI-400, an AMBA-4 coherent interconnect) and 4 clusters per chip with CCN-504. ARM provide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Multi-core Processor
A multi-core processor is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit with two or more separate processing units, called cores, each of which reads and executes program instructions. The instructions are ordinary CPU instructions (such as add, move data, and branch) but the single processor can run instructions on separate cores at the same time, increasing overall speed for programs that support multithreading or other parallel computing techniques. Manufacturers typically integrate the cores onto a single integrated circuit die (known as a chip multiprocessor or CMP) or onto multiple dies in a single chip package. The microprocessors currently used in almost all personal computers are multi-core. A multi-core processor implements multiprocessing in a single physical package. Designers may couple cores in a multi-core device tightly or loosely. For example, cores may or may not share caches, and they may implement message passing or shared-memory inter-core communica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ARM Cortex-A7 MPCore
The ARM Cortex-A7 MPCore is a 32-bit microprocessor core licensed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARMv7-A architecture announced in 2011. Overview It has two target applications; firstly as a smaller, simpler, and more power-efficient successor to the Cortex-A8. The other use is in the big.LITTLE architecture, combining one or more A7 cores with one or more Cortex-A15 cores into a heterogeneous system. To do this it is fully feature-compatible with the A15. Key features of the Cortex-A7 core are: * Partial dual-issue, in-order microarchitecture with an 8-stage pipeline * NEON SIMD instruction set extension * VFPv4 Floating Point Unit * Thumb-2 instruction set encoding * Jazelle RCT * Hardware virtualization * Large Page Address Extensions (LPAE) * Integrated level 2 Cache (0–1 MB) * 1.9 DMIPS / MHz * Typical clock speed 1.5 GHz Chips Several system-on-chips (SoC) have implemented the Cortex-A7 core, including: * Allwinner A20 (dual-core A7 + Mali-400 MP2 GPU) * All ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heterogeneous Computing
Heterogeneous computing refers to systems that use more than one kind of processor or cores. These systems gain performance or energy efficiency not just by adding the same type of processors, but by adding dissimilar coprocessors, usually incorporating specialized processing capabilities to handle particular tasks. Heterogeneity Usually heterogeneity in the context of computing referred to different instruction-set architectures (ISA), where the main processor has one and other processors have another - usually a very different - architecture (maybe more than one), not just a different microarchitecture (floating point number processing is a special case of this - not usually referred to as heterogeneous). In the past heterogeneous computing meant different ISAs had to be handled differently, while in a modern example, Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) systems eliminate the difference (for the user) while using multiple processor types (typically CPUs and GPUs), usuall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ARMv8
ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures for computer processors, configured for various environments. Arm Ltd. develops the architectures and licenses them to other companies, who design their own products that implement one or more of those architectures, including system on a chip (SoC) and system on module (SOM) designs, that incorporate different components such as memory, interfaces, and radios. It also designs cores that implement these instruction set architectures and licenses these designs to many companies that incorporate those core designs into their own products. There have been several generations of the ARM design. The original ARM1 used a 32-bit internal structure but had a 26-bit address space that limited it to 64 MB of main memory. This limitation was removed in the ARMv3 series, which ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ARM Cortex-A53
The ARM Cortex-A53 is one of the first two central processing units implementing the ARMv8-A 64-bit instruction set designed by ARM Holdings' Cambridge design centre. The Cortex-A53 is a 2-wide decode superscalar processor, capable of dual-issuing some instructions. It was announced October 30, 2012 and is marketed by ARM as either a stand-alone, more energy-efficient alternative to the more powerful Cortex-A57 microarchitecture, or to be used alongside a more powerful microarchitecture in a big.LITTLE configuration. It is available as an IP core to licensees, like other ARM intellectual property and processor designs. Overview * 8-stage pipelined processor with 2-way superscalar, in-order execution pipeline * DSP and NEON SIMD extensions are mandatory per core * VFPv4 Floating Point Unit onboard (per core) * Hardware virtualization support * TrustZone security extensions * 64-byte cache lines * 10-entry L1 TLB, and 512-entry L2 TLB * 4KiB conditional branch predictor, 25 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ARM Cortex-A17
The ARM Cortex-A17 is a 32-bit processor core implementing the ARMv7-A architecture, licensed by ARM Holdings. Providing up to four cache-coherent cores, it serves as the successor to the Cortex-A9 and replaces the previous ARM Cortex-A12 specifications. ARM claims that the Cortex-A17 core provides 60% higher performance than the Cortex-A9 core, while reducing the power consumption by 20% under the same workload. ARM renamed Cortex-A12 to a variant of Cortex-A17 since the second revision of the A12 core in early 2014, because these two were indistinguishable in performance and all features available in the A17 were used as upgrades in the A12. New features of the Cortex-A17 specification, not found in the Cortex-A9 specification, are all improvements from the third-generation ARM Cortex-A, which also includes the Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A15: * Hardware virtualization and 40-bit Large Physical Address Extensions (LPAE) addressing * Full-system coherency, bringing support for the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Out-of-order Execution
In computer engineering, out-of-order execution (or more formally dynamic execution) is a paradigm used in most high-performance central processing units to make use of instruction cycles that would otherwise be wasted. In this paradigm, a processor executes instructions in an order governed by the availability of input data and execution units, rather than by their original order in a program. In doing so, the processor can avoid being idle while waiting for the preceding instruction to complete and can, in the meantime, process the next instructions that are able to run immediately and independently. History Out-of-order execution is a restricted form of data flow computation, which was a major research area in computer architecture in the 1970s and early 1980s. The first machine to use out-of-order execution was the CDC 6600 (1964), designed by James E. Thornton, which uses a scoreboard to avoid conflicts. It permits an instruction to execute if its source operand (read) a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Multi-processor System-on-chip
A multiprocessor system on a chip (, ' or ) is a system on a chip (SoC) which includes multiple microprocessors. As such, it is a multi-core system on a chip. MPSoCs are usually targeted for embedded applications. It is used by platforms that contain multiple, usually heterogeneous, processing elements with specific functionalities reflecting the need of the expected application domain, a memory hierarchy and I/O components. All these components are linked to each other by an on-chip interconnect, such as buses and Networks on chip (NoCs). These architectures meet the performance needs of multimedia applications, telecommunication architectures, network security and other application domains while limiting the power consumption through the use of specialised processing elements and architecture. Structure A multiprocessor system on a chip must by definition have multiple processor cores. MPSoCs often contain multiple logically distinct processor modules as well. Additi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linaro
Linaro is an engineering organization that works on free and open-source software such as the Linux kernel, the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), QEMU, power management, graphics and multimedia interfaces for the ARM family of instruction sets and implementations thereof as well as for the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA). The company provides a collaborative engineering forum for companies to share engineering resources and funding to solve common problems on ARM software. Linaro works on software that is close to the silicon such as kernel, multimedia, power management, graphics and security. The company aims to provide stable, tested tools and code for multiple software distributions to use to reduce low-level fragmentation of embedded Linux software. It also provides engineering and investment in upstream open source projects and support to silicon companies in upstreaming code to be used with their systems-on-a-chip (SoC). Since the 3.10 Linux kernel release, Linaro has ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ARM Cortex-A57
The ARM Cortex-A57 is a central processing unit implementing the ARMv8-A 64-bit instruction set designed by ARM Holdings. The Cortex-A57 is an out-of-order superscalar pipeline. It is available as SIP core to licensees, and its design makes it suitable for integration with other SIP cores (e.g. GPU, display controller, DSP, image processor, etc.) into one die constituting a system on a chip (SoC). Overview * Pipelined processor with deeply out of order, speculative issue 3-way superscalar execution pipeline * DSP and NEON SIMD extensions are mandatory per core * VFPv4 Floating Point Unit onboard (per core) * Hardware virtualization support * Thumb-2 instruction set encoding reduces the size of 32-bit programs with little impact on performance. * TrustZone security extensions * Program Trace Macrocell and CoreSight Design Kit for unobtrusive tracing of instruction execution * 32 KiB data (2-way set-associative) + 48 KiB instruction (3-way set-associative) L1 c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
