Arm Client CPU Roadmap Includes Advanced Hercules and Deimos Chips
Arm has publicly disclosed both forward-looking compute performance data and a CPU roadmap for the company's Client Line of Business from now through 2020.
ARM said that the follow-up to Cortex-A76 will be codenamed 'Deimos' and delivered to ARM's partners in 2018. Optimized for the latest 7nm nodes, 'Deimos' is based on Arm DynamIQ technology and is expected to deliver a 15+ percent increase in compute performance.
In 2019, the CPU codenamed 'Hercules' will be available to Arm partners. 'Hercules', also based on DynamIQ technology, will be optimized for both the latest 5nm and 7nm nodes. ARM says that 'Hercules' continues the trajectory of increased compute performance, while also improving power and area efficiency by 10 percent (in addition to the efficiency gains achievable from the 5nm process node).
ARM's roadmap of client CPUs has been designed to take advantage of the innovation 5G will bring to all client devices. ARM hopes that the new ARM SoCs will break through the dominance of x86 and gain market share in Windows laptops and Chromebooks over the next five years.
Additionally, the Arm Artisan Physical IP platform and Arm POP IP will is available to Arm partners to help them get more performance-per-watt out of their SoCs. Artisan is a key part of building process nodes for ARM's foundry partners from 130nm down to 5nm, while POP IP has helped the company's partners realize eading performance, power, and area (PPA) over many generations of Arm cores.
Windows 10 systems powered by Arm-based Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs are already available from ASUS, Lenovo, HP, and Samsung have also announced they will join the mix as well.