In past few years mobile processors improved from single core 400 MHz to quad core 1.9 GHz and even to Octa core. In parallel to that GPU and RAM were also getting more and more power.
Last week I came across with several news items about Cortex-A12 CPU. While handset manufactures are in continuous missions to give devices more power, this is a step back, a downgrade.
Shape of Cortex-A12
Cortex-A12 CPU core will sit between A9 and latest A15. It expected to be 40% faster than A9 core. Since A12 is fabricated at 28nm it will be energy efficient than 40 nm A9. When manufacturing SoC this could go with mid range GPU. Importantly Cortex-A12 supports big.LITTLE architecture and could work with A7 core to save power.
Reason for Releasing Mid Range Processors
Device Cost
Every year hundreds of millions of mobile handsets are sold all over the world. If you take a closer look at statistics you will figure out that most of them are sitting over $400 price point, in other words “Expensive”. But those “Expansive” devices are catering only small proportion of total demand. Large part of the global market is asking for mid and entry level devices.
Many of the major component and handset manufactures are missing this huge market. To tap that market, they need mid-level devices that cost less than $400. That is a major reason for Cortex-A12 series CPUs by ARM.
Power Consumption
No matter what sort of advance handset you have, it can live only one day with its battery. This will get even worse with mid-range devices since manufactures can’t spend too much money on a good quality battery. So they need less power consuming internals specially CPU, GPU and display.
Cortex-A12 CPU would consume much lesser energy than A9 with its 22mm fabrication, yet give 40% better performance. In addition it supports big.LITTLE architecture to make it even more efficient. It would be a solid solution for battery life problem in mid-range handsets.
Mobile OS Upgrades
When developing modern mobile OS, engineers are paying extra attention to make them highly performance tuned. Due to that they can perform better even with average hardware. I noticed this difference with Android JB update. After that my Galaxy Nexus felt like a totally new device. The story is same with Windows mobile 8 as well.
So, latest mobile operating systems are not asking for more processing power unless you are playing games. Therefore Cortex-A12 would be a great choice for mid-range low priced mobile devices.
Finally
All the high end mobile handset manufactures were in a cold war for past few years. They were too busy upgrading specs rather than thinking whether users really need them. As a result today we have 1080p display and Octa core CPU. The sad story is they are idling most of the time.
True that, the major demand in the mobile handset market is for low priced mid-range devices. But going back to Cortex-A9 is not really a good idea when it comes to power consumption though its power is more than enough for many of average work. Cortex-A12 CPU cores will be fast enough, efficient enough to power up future mid-range mobile handsets for much lesser cost.
Tags: #Mobile #Smartphone #Tablet