ARM plans to take on Intel in laptops with 7nm 'Deimos' and 5nm 'Hercules' CPUs

ARM plans 7nm 'Deimos' for 2019 and 5nm and 7nm 'Hercules' for 2020

ARM has released details about its client computing roadmap, the devices with which it plans to take market share from Intel in laptops in 2019 and 2020.

Code-named ‘Deimos' and ‘Hercules', the devices are designed to take advantage of Samsung and TSMC's developing 7nm and 5nm manufacturing technology and will, according to ARM senior director Ian Smythe, take ARM even closer to challenging Intel in terms of mobile client computing performance.

Deimos and Hercules will follow-up 2018's Cortex-A76, which has been produced on 7nm and 10nm processes, and which can run at up to 3GHz with a TDP of five watts - one third of Intel's 15w standard for its low-power laptop parts.

ARM claims the Cortex-A76 offers performance on a par with Intel's Core i5-7300U, when it is running at its turbo clock speed of 3.5GHz, but outperforming it by a significant margin with both running at their standard clock speeds.

ARM's chosen benchmark test is SpectINT2k6, running on Ubuntu 18.04 in dual boot configuration*.

Deimos and Hercules will therefore not just outperform Intel's Core i5-7300U, but also the devices it will be replaced with on Intel's roadmap, Smythe implied, given the relatively trajectories of the two company's most recent products.

In addition, the roll-out of 5G with the prospect of lower cost, more ubiquitous mobile data will also drive demand for more mobile computing, added Smythe, promising a "more confident" and "more aggressive" push from ARM in getting the company's CPU designs into laptops.

Smythe was speaking earlier this week in a conference call with journalists.

Smythe claimed that HP and Asus, among others, are already making machines with ARM silicon, but hinted that major manufacturers will likely be working on Windows 10 laptops or hybrid devices that run on ARM-based processors in the future, too. Chromebooks, as well, could make use of ARM-based processors, rather than low-powered Intel laptop chips.

The big question mark, though, is whether ARM and its foundry partners can deliver on their ambitious manufacturing plans, particularly the challenging die-shrinkage to 5nm, within their planned deadlines.

* According to ARM, the benchmark results represent the median score of 10 runs at room temperature, screensaver disabled, using Ubuntu 18.04 in dual boot configuration. Workload SPEC2006INT, GCC7 Cortex-A76 system using 4MB L3, 100ns LD-use DDR latency, 7nm