ARM unveils 64-bit processors for servers and smartphones

ARM Cortex-A50 series "scales from smartphones to tablets to enterprise servers"

ARM has officially launched its first processor designs based on its ARMv8 architecture, bringing 64-bit computing to its ecosystem for the first time.

The new designs will enable the firm to target everything from high-performance smartphones through to scale-out enterprise servers.

The Cortex-A50 series is claimed by ARM to be the most power-efficient available. It initially comprises the Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57 core designs, which are compatible with all existing 32-bit software but add a new 64-bit execution state and 64-bit instructions, ARM said.

As with all ARM processors, the new Cortex designs will be produced by the firm's silicon vendor licensee partners. The first chips are expected by 2013 at the earliest, while devices based on them are slated for the 2014 to 2015 timeframe.

ARM first detailed its 64-bit ARMv8 architecture a year ago, but today's core designs are the first products from the firm to make use of it.

Licensees for the 64-bit chips include AMD, which announced its intention to develop ARM-based servers yesterday, STMicroelectronics, Samsung, Calxeda and Broadcom.

Greater power efficiency is urgently needed in today's IT landscape, due to the increasing importance of mobile battery-driven devices connected to cloud-based services powered by datacentres full of servers, according to Ian Drew, ARM vice president of marketing and business development.

"Bring your own device is driving the need for higher performance combined with low power consumption to last a whole working day. But this mobile world needs to be managed at the back end, and we can't have CO² emissions mushrooming as data processing needs grow," he said.

ARM unveils 64-bit processors for servers and smartphones

ARM Cortex-A50 series "scales from smartphones to tablets to enterprise servers"

The two new cores have a slightly different mix of capabilities, with the Cortex-A57 optimised for high performance, delivering three times the performance of today's smartphones but at the same power consumption level.

Meanwhile, the Cortex-A53 delivers the same performance as the current generation of ARM chips but at a quarter of the power consumption.

This will deliver handsets with the same experience of today's superphones at mass-market cost, according to ARM, as the design can be implemented using 40 percent less silicon space than the Cortex-A9, making it more cost-effective to produce.

Both designs enable the silicon vendor partners to produce multi-gigahertz, multi-core chips when combined with ARM's recently announced CoreLink interconnect and other technology such as its Mali GPU cores.

"We see designs using eight, 16, or 32 cores coming to market in the future," said Drew.

However, while ARM is already dominant in the mobile space, its ability to penetrate the server market will depend on software support as much as hardware performance, a fact the company recognises.

Initial adoption is being driven by open-source tools, such as ARM versions of the LAMP stack for web application hosting, according to AMD's Suresh Gopalakrishnan, corporate vice president of its server business unit.

However, ARM also said that servers based on its chips are also proving a good fit for big data analytics applications using tools such as Hadoop, especially where the ability to handle large volumes of data is a key requirement rather than raw processing power.