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 primary Processor (computing), processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes Instruction (computing), instructions ...

(CPU) core implementing the 64-bit ARMv8.2-A architecture, designed by

Arm Holdings Arm Holdings plc (formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England, whose primary business is the design of central processing ...

' design center in

Austin, Texas Austin ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat and most populous city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and W ...

. Compared to its predecessor, the Cortex-A75, ARM claimed performance improvements of up to 25% in integer operations and 35% in floating-point operations.

Design

The Cortex-A76 is a successor to both the

Cortex-A73 The ARM Cortex-A73 is a central processing unit implementing the ARMv8-A 64-bit instruction set designed by ARM Holdings' Sophia Antipolis, Sophia design centre. The Cortex-A73 is a 2-wide decode out-of-order execution, out-of-order superscalar pi ...

and Cortex-A75, though it is based on an entirely new microarchitecture. It features a 4-wide decode, out-of-order, superscalar pipeline. The frontend can fetch and decode four instructions per cycle and dispatch up to four macro-operations and eight micro-operations per cycle. The out-of-order execution window includes 128 entries. The backend includes eight execution ports, with a pipeline depth of 13 stages and execution latencies of 11 stages. The Cortex-A76 supports unprivileged 32-bit applications, but privileged software, such as operating systems and kernels, must use 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 RISC instruction set architectures (ISAs) for computer processors. Arm Holdings develops the ISAs and lice ...

instruction set. Additional features include support for ARMv8.3-A's LDAPR instructions, ARMv8.4-A's dot product instructions, and ARMv8.5-A's speculative execution controls such as SSBS, CSDB, SSBB, and PSSBB. Memory bandwidth is improved by up to 90% over the Cortex-A75. ARM targeted the Cortex-A76 for high-performance computing, including

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

laptops, positioning it as a competitor to

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

’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 p ...

architecture. The Cortex-A76 also supports

ARM DynamIQ 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''). The intention is to cr ...

technology, and is often paired with energy-efficient Cortex-A55 cores in multi-core configurations.

Usage

The Cortex-A76 is available as a

semiconductor intellectual property core A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

(SIP core) and can be licensed by manufacturers for integration into custom

system on a chip A system on a chip (SoC) is an integrated circuit that combines most or all key components of a computer or Electronics, electronic system onto a single microchip. Typically, an SoC includes a central processing unit (CPU) with computer memory, ...

(SoC) designs. It is commonly combined with other components such as

graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

s (GPUs),

digital signal processor A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor chip, with its architecture optimized for the operational needs of digital signal processing. DSPs are fabricated on metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit chips. ...

s (DSPs), and image signal processors (ISPs) on a single chip. The Cortex-A76 first appeared in the

HiSilicon HiSilicon ( zh, c=海思, p=Hǎisī) is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company based in Shenzhen, Guangdong province and wholly owned by Huawei. HiSilicon purchases licenses for CPU designs from ARM Holdings, including the ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore ...

Kirin 980 SoC. The company's later Kirin 985 and 990 series of SoCs would also use the A76. ARM collaborated with

Qualcomm Qualcomm Incorporated () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless techn ...

on semi-custom versions of the Cortex-A76 used in several of its

Kryo Qualcomm Kryo is a series of custom or semi-custom ARM-based CPUs included in the Snapdragon line of SoCs. These CPUs implement the ARM 64-bit instruction set and serve as the successor to the previous 32-bit Krait CPUs. It was first introduc ...

CPU designs, including the Kryo 495 (Snapdragon 8cx), Kryo 485 ( Snapdragon 855/855 Plus), Kryo 470 ( Snapdragon 730), and Kryo 460 (Snapdragon 675). Qualcomm made several architectural modifications, such as increasing the reorder buffer to expand the out-of-order execution window. Other SoCs using the Cortex-A76 include: *

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational designer, developer, manufacturer, and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data cen ...

BCM2712 SoC (2023) with four A76 cores. Used in the Raspberry Pi 5. *

Agilex D-series SoC FPGAs *

MediaTek MediaTek Inc. (), sometimes informally abbreviated as MTK, is a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company that designs and manufactures a range of semiconductor products, providing chips for wireless communications, high-definition television, h ...

Helio G90, G90T, G95, G99, and Dimensity 800 and 820 *

Rockchip Rockchip (Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co., Ltd.) is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company based in Fuzhou, Fujian province. It has offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Hong Kong. It designs system on a chip (SoC) products, usi ...

RK3588 and RK3588S (2020) *

Samsung Exynos The Samsung Exynos (stylized as SΛMSUNG 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 e ...

990 and Exynos Auto V9

Notes

References

{{Application ARM-based chips ARM processors

Design

Usage

See also

Notes

References