The ARM Cortex-A55 is a
central processing unit
A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just Processor (computing), processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes Instruction (computing), instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU per ...
implementing the
ARMv8.2-A 64-bit
instruction set designed by
ARM Holdings'
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...
design centre. The Cortex-A55 is a 2-wide decode
in-order superscalar pipeline.
Design
The Cortex-A55 serves as the successor of the
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- ...
, designed to improve performance and energy efficiency over the A53. ARM has stated the A55 should have 15% improved power efficiency and 18% increased performance relative to the A53. Memory access and
branch prediction
In computer architecture, a branch predictor is a digital circuit that tries to guess which way a branch (e.g., an if–then–else structure) will go before this is known definitively. The purpose of the branch predictor is to improve the flow ...
are also improved relative to the A53.
The
Cortex-A75 and Cortex-A55 cores are the first products to support
ARM's DynamIQ technology.
The successor to
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 "s ...
, this technology is designed to be more flexible and scalable when designing multi-core products.
Licensing
The Cortex-A55 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 ...
, etc.) into one
die constituting a
system on a chip (SoC).
ARM has also collaborated with
Qualcomm for a semi-custom version of the Cortex-A55, used within the
Kryo 385 CPU core. This semi-custom core is also used in some Qualcomm's mid-range SoCs as
Kryo 360 Silver and
Kryo 460 Silver.
Usage
The Cortex-A55 is used as Little-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.
References
{{Application ARM-based chips
ARM processors