ARM tries again
The A17 is the success to the A9, which doesn’t support big.LITTLE which requires the AMBA ACE interface. It is also successor to the A12, released in June last year that was also meant to replace the A9, but has an AMBA AXI interface rather than ACE.
ARM has been reasonably quick to discontinue cores that do not gain market traction such as the A8. The A12 has been low profile in the six months since launch, although VIA Telecom has been a customer and will now use the A17.
“Our experience and expertise in ARM SoC architectures, includingCortex-A9 and Cortex-A12, combined with our core strengths in advanced wireless telecommunications technologies makes VIA well-positioned to use the mid-range mobile devices opportunity with the ARM Cortex-A17 processor,” said Ker Zhang, Chief Executive Officer of VIATelecom.
The A17 is aimed at mid-range smartphones and tablets usng chis from companies such as Mediatek, Realtek and VIA. It provides a 60% boost in performance over the A9, matched with an A7 core to reduce the power in standby and phone mode. The update to the interface also allows other blocks such as the Mali-T720 GPU for graphics and GPU computing APIs, the Mali-V500 for video output and the Mali-DP500 display processor block that includes content protection.
“As a leader in multimedia SoC solutions, Realtek sees the Cortex-A17 processor as continuing the ARM track record of delivering the right balance of performance and power to address the demand for new products,” said Jessy Chen, Executive Vice President of Realtek.
The Cortex-A17 is scalable up to 4 cores, each offering a full out-of-order pipeline along with a fully integrated, low-latency L2 cache controller.
“We expect to see a rich set of innovation in the mid-range mobile phone segment which is forecast to become a half a billion unit market annually from 2015 and the Cortex-A17 processor will be a key component in that growth,” said Ian Ferguson, vice president of segment marketing at ARM.
"The new ARM Cortex-A17 processor combines high performance with cost and efficiency, delivering an excellent user experience and a premium feature set, making it the best processing option available to continue our success in the mobile market," said Johan Lodenius, chief marketing officer of MediaTek.
As well as smartphones and tablets, ARM sees the A17 being used in Smart-TVs, IPTV boxes, automotive infotainment systems.
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