The ARM Cortex-A76 is a
central processing unit
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...
implementing the
ARMv8.2-A
AArch64 or ARM64 is the 64-bit extension of the ARM architecture family.
It was first introduced with the Armv8-A architecture. Arm releases a new extension every year.
ARMv8.x and ARMv9.x extensions and features
Announced in October 2011, AR ...
64-bit
instruction set
In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ' ...
designed by
ARM Holdings
Arm is a British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England.
Its primary business is in the design of ARM processors (CPUs). It also designs other chips, provides software development tools under the DS-5, RealView an ...
'
Austin
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...
design centre. ARM states a 25% and 35% increase in integer and floating point performance, respectively, over a
Cortex-A75 of the previous generation.
Design
The Cortex-A76 serves as the successor of the
ARM Cortex-A73
The ARM Cortex-A73 is a central processing unit implementing the ARMv8-A 64-bit instruction set designed by ARM Holdings' Sophia design centre. The Cortex-A73 is a 2-wide decode out-of-order superscalar pipeline. The Cortex-A73 serves as the suc ...
and
ARM Cortex-A75
The ARM Cortex-A75 is a central processing unit implementing the ARMv8.2-A 64-bit instruction set designed by ARM Holdings's Sophia design centre. The Cortex-A75 is a 3-wide decode out-of-order superscalar pipeline. The Cortex-A75 serves as ...
, though based on a clean sheet design.
The Cortex-A76 frontend is a 4-wide decode
out-of-order superscalar
A superscalar processor is a CPU that implements a form of parallelism called instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. In contrast to a scalar processor, which can execute at most one single instruction per clock cycle, a sup ...
design. It can fetch 4 instructions per cycle. And rename and dispatch 4 Mops, and 8 µops per cycle. The out-of-order window size is 128 entries. The backend is 8 execution ports with a pipeline depth of 13 stages and the execution latencies of 11 stages.
The core supports
unprivileged 32-bit applications, but privileged applications must utilize the 64-bit
ARMv8-A
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 ...
ISA.
It also supports Load acquire (LDAPR) instructions (
ARMv8.3-A
AArch64 or ARM64 is the 64-bit extension of the ARM architecture family.
It was first introduced with the Armv8-A architecture. Arm releases a new extension every year.
ARMv8.x and ARMv9.x extensions and features
Announced in October 2011, AR ...
), Dot Product instructions (
ARMv8.4-A
AArch64 or ARM64 is the 64-bit extension of the ARM architecture family.
It was first introduced with the Armv8-A architecture. Arm releases a new extension every year.
ARMv8.x and ARMv9.x extensions and features
Announced in October 2011, AR ...
), PSTATE Speculative Store Bypass Safe (SSBS) bit and the speculation barriers (CSDB, SSBB, PSSBB) instructions (
ARMv8.5-A).
Memory bandwidth increased 90% relative to the A75. According to ARM, the A76 is expected to offer twice the performance of an A73 and is targeted beyond mobile workloads. The performance is targeted at "
laptop class", including
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...
devices, competitive with
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
's
Kaby Lake
Kaby Lake is Intel's codename for its seventh generation Core microprocessor family announced on August 30, 2016. Like the preceding Skylake, Kaby Lake is produced using a 14 nanometer manufacturing process technology. Breaking with Intel's ...
.
The Cortex-A76 support
ARM's DynamIQ technology, expected to be used as high-performance cores when used in combination with
Cortex-A55 power-efficient cores.
Licensing
The Cortex-A76 is available as
SIP core to licensees, and its design makes it suitable for integration with other SIP cores (e.g.
GPU
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...
,
display controller
A video display controller or VDC (also called a display engine or display interface) is an integrated circuit which is the main component in a video-signal generator, a device responsible for the production of a TV video signal in a computing ...
,
DSP
DSP may refer to:
Computing
* Digital signal processing, the mathematical manipulation of an information signal
* Digital signal processor, a microprocessor designed for digital signal processing
* Yamaha DSP-1, a proprietary digital signal ...
,
image processor
An image processor, also known as an image processing engine, image processing unit (IPU), or image signal processor (ISP), is a type of media processor or specialized digital signal processor (DSP) used for image processing, in digital cameras or ...
, etc.) into one
die
Die, as a verb, refers to death, the cessation of life.
Die may also refer to:
Games
* Die, singular of dice, small throwable objects used for producing random numbers
Manufacturing
* Die (integrated circuit), a rectangular piece of a semicondu ...
constituting a
system on a chip
A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...
(SoC).
Usage
The Cortex-A76 was first used in the
HiSilicon Kirin 980.
ARM has also collaborated with Qualcomm for a semi-custom version of the Cortex-A76, used within their high-end
Kryo 495 (Snapdragon 8cx)/
Kryo 485 (Snapdragon 855 and 855 Plus), and also in their mid-range
Kryo 460 (Snapdragon 675) and
Kryo 470 (Snapdragon 730) CPUs. One of the modifications Qualcomm made was increasing reorder buffer to increase the out-of-order window size.
It is also used in the
Exynos 990 and Exynos Auto V9. And the
MediaTek Helio G90/G90T/G95 and
Dimensity 800 and Dimensity 820. And the
HiSilicon Kirin 985 5G and
Kirin 990 4G/990 5G/990E 5G.
The Cortex-A76 can be found in
Snapdragon 855 as Big-core.
The Cortex-A76 is used as Big-core in
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
Agilex D-series SoC FPGA devices.
In 2020 Cortex-A76 was used in
Rockchip RK3588.
See also
*
ARM Cortex-A75
The ARM Cortex-A75 is a central processing unit implementing the ARMv8.2-A 64-bit instruction set designed by ARM Holdings's Sophia design centre. The Cortex-A75 is a 3-wide decode out-of-order superscalar pipeline. The Cortex-A75 serves as ...
, predecessor
*
ARM Cortex-A77
The ARM Cortex-A77 is a central processing unit implementing the ARMv8.2-A 64-bit instruction set designed by ARM Holdings' Austin design centre. ARM announced an increase of 23% and 35% in integer and floating point performance, respectively. M ...
, successor
*
Comparison of ARMv8-A cores
This is a comparison of processors based on the ARM family of instruction sets designed by ARM Holdings and 3rd parties, sorted by version of the ARM instruction set, release and name.
ARMv6
ARMv7-A
This is a table comparing central proc ...
, ARMv8 family
References
{{Application ARM-based chips
ARM processors