The Cortex-A73, a CPU that won't overheat - Gary explains

The Future of ARM Chips: Cortex A73 and System on a Chip Technology

ARM chips have come a long way since their inception, and recent advancements in technology have made them even more powerful and efficient. One such advancement is the introduction of the Cortex A73 processor, which boasts impressive performance boosts over its predecessor, the Cortex A72.

The Cortex A73 is a significant improvement over the Cortex A72, with the latter being 10 to 15% slower than the former. This means that devices powered by the A73 will experience a noticeable increase in performance, without any dip in speed after prolonged use. Moreover, when built on the same 16nm process as current chips like the Kirin 950 and Kirin 995, the Cortex A73 produces 20% less heat, allowing for better thermal management and more efficient cooling systems.

This technology is particularly significant when considering system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs. SoCs are integral to modern mobile devices, combining multiple components such as processors, memory, and graphics onto a single chip. The Cortex A73's performance boost and efficiency gains make it an attractive choice for manufacturers looking to improve their devices' overall capabilities.

One of the most exciting developments in this space is the potential for devices to feature the Cortex A73 processor. Arm has already demonstrated its commitment to partnering with manufacturers, and it's likely that we'll see SoCs powered by the A73 on various platforms in the near future. In fact, a test chip of the Cortex A73 has already been created, and the data will be shared with partners to expedite production.

The introduction of the Cortex A73 has significant implications for mid-range devices, which often rely on eight-core processors featuring four Cortex A53 cores and one or two Cortex A72 cores. However, the latest advancements in ARM technology have made it possible to create hexacore processors using just two Cortex A73 cores and four Cortex A53 cores, all within the same system-on-a-chip space. This development could lead to a significant boost in single-thread performance, with applications such as scrolling on web pages or loading web pages experiencing noticeable improvements.

The potential benefits of this technology are substantial, particularly for devices that rely on multi-threaded tasks such as gaming or video editing. With a 90% boost in single-thread performance and 30% better multi-threading speeds, devices powered by the Cortex A73 will be significantly faster and more efficient than their predecessors. As we look to the future of ARM chips, it's clear that the Cortex A73 is poised to play a major role in shaping the next generation of mobile devices.

What's Next for ARM Chips?

As manufacturers continue to explore the possibilities of the Cortex A73 processor, we can expect to see a range of innovative applications and devices emerge. From mid-range smartphones to high-end gaming consoles, the potential benefits of the Cortex A73 are vast and varied.

For gamers, the increased performance and efficiency gains will be particularly welcome. With devices powered by the Cortex A73 capable of delivering fast and seamless performance, the gaming experience is set to improve dramatically. For developers, the technology offers a range of opportunities for creating more efficient and powerful applications.

As we move forward into 2017, it's likely that devices powered by the Cortex A73 will become increasingly common. With Arm continuing to partner with manufacturers and explore new technologies, the future of ARM chips looks bright indeed. Whether you're a gamer, developer, or simply someone who wants to stay up-to-date on the latest technology trends, one thing is certain: the Cortex A73 is set to play a major role in shaping the next generation of mobile devices.

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"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello there my name is Gary Sims from Android authority now arm's current leading processor design is the cortex a72 and we find it in system on chips like the kir 950 the kir 95 which we find in phones like the Huawei mate 8 and the Huawei P9 also colcom are using it in some of their mid-range chips now today arm have announced the cortex a73 so what does the a73 bring to the table how is it different to the cortex a72 well let me explain now when you use your smartphone the CPU is running and it produces Heat and the amount of heat it produces is a function of the voltage and of the frequency and of the chip design and basically that heat is dissipated through the phone itself now when you do something like open an app or read a web page the CPU usage will Peak momentarily just for a few seconds and then it will drop down again as the app opens or as the web page is rendered and then while you're reading the web page the CPU can be running at a very low level and that's absolutely normal and that's absolutely fine and the amount of heat it produces during that Peak can doesn't really matter because only doing it for a few seconds and the phone very easily dissipates that heat through its chassis and through the body of the phone now when you start doing something complicated with your phone that heat starts to build up and the more it builds up the more heat has to be dissipated through the body of the phone and you've said it yourself you might be holding your phone and it might feel warm to the touch at the back and that's the heat being dissipated because unlike desktops a mobile phone a smartphone doesn't have a heat sink and a cooler and a big fan that's running on the back of it it's all just passive heat dissipation now basically what happens is when you start running your phone at a high workload for a long period of time that heat that's going out through the phone gets to a saturation point and it can't dissipate any more heat so therefore if you keep adding heat the foam will just get hotter and hotter and hotter and in fact it will become uncomfortable in the hand now when it gets to that point the Linux kernel knows what's going on and it will actually bring down the amount of heat being produced by your CPU and it does that using a thing called throttling it will bring down the frequency it may even bring down some things like the voltages so that the heat being produced by the CPU is less and gives the chassis the body of the phone a chance to get rid of all the heat that it already has and then if later on it finds that it actually has uh spare capacity more heat can be produced it will ramp up the CP usage again now this is really interesting because what happens is when it throttles when it brings down the heat it actually brings down the performance so when we run a benchmark and we all run benchmarks I run them to test phones as well but when we run a benchmark we often do it when the phone is cold and it runs and it can produce a peak level of performance for a short amount of time how long do these benchmarks take to run a few seconds 30 seconds a minute and then that's it they're over now of course what happens if you're doing it that Benchmark time and time and time again or you're playing a game for a long period of time or you're doing lots of calculations for a long period of time the performance will actually drop now here's the thing about the cortex a73 the amount of heat it produces during its Peak Performance level just those few seconds that you're using it and the amount of heat it produces with a sustained level of uh workload is almost exactly the same and we've never seen anything like this in a smartphone chip before always there's been an overhead where the CPU can hit a peak and produce more heat just for a short amount of time but when it comes to its sustained level it has to be uh much lower but with the CeX a73 they are the same thing and that is really an amazing thing for designers because first of all it means that the amount of heat that's going to be produced by this CPU is constant and that may give way to New Designs the new ways to make mobile phones make smartphones the materials that are used where the the CPU is placed on the circuit board and so on because now the CPU designer knows that this level is always going to be constant and it also means that when we're playing games when we're using the app the apps that are CPU intensive actually the performance won't drop it will actually stay the same after the first minute and after 30 minutes we should be getting the same level of performance and again that's something we haven't seen before in a mobile system on a chip now before I go any further there are a few caveats the CPU and we're talking about the CPU here is only one part on a system on a chip the GPU is another important part and it produces a significant amount of heat as well and there are other components as well like the modems and the the isps and the dsps and the memory controllers and they all produce an amount of heat as well now if you got a very efficient CPU but the GPU is producing lots of heat the CPU will end up still being throttled because it's the overall heat that is the issue here so that's a caveat we are just talking about the CPU here and not about the GPU and other parts that go with it and there are of course other other technologies that can be used to bring down the heat including big. little which incorporates more power efficient CPU cores with high performance CPU CES there's also things like the intelligent power allocation algorithm that's now in the mainstream uh Linux kernel which means that if the CPU has is running and it's not using all of its performance and some of that heat allocation that thermal budget can be given over to the GPU so the overall temperature can rise to its maximum now in terms of the actual design of the cortex A7 2 I won't go into it too much here in this video there are some interesting things like it uses now a 64k instruction cash things like that you can go over and read the article that I've written over at Android authority.com if those things are of interest to you however what will be of interest to you is What's called the process node now each chip is made using uh silicon using transistors and the idea is the smaller the gap between the transistors and the smaller the transistors the more efficient the chip can be now today's modern chips that we find in the Galaxy S7 uh both the Qualcomm and the Samsung variants are are built using a 16 NM process and arm have already announced that they are working on a test chip at 10 NM and it's expected that the cortex a73 will be able to be built at 10 nanom however it can also be built at 16 nanom in fact it can probably also be built at 28 nanom if that's what uh silicon vendors wanted so let me throw some numbers at you if if it's built at 16 NM like the current uh chips of today like the kin 950 and the kin 995 then the cortex a73 is 10 to 15% faster than the cortex a72 so it's a 10% performance boost but yet a sustained level of performance throughout the whole working lifetime of a program it doesn't dip after a few minutes now also when it's built on the same 160 NM process it produces 20% less heat now that means that component like the GPU can be given a bit more of the thermal budget so they can run faster and they can produce more high performance 3D Graphics now when the cortex 873 is built using a 10 NM process and armor will already prove they can do that you'll find an article over at the Android authority.com website which talks about a chip that they've made with code named artamus and we now know that artamus is in fact the cortex a73 on a 10 nmet process the a73 is 30% faster than the a72 and it's 30% more efficient than the a72 so that means that when we start to see the system on our chips for the a73 they're going to be faster they're going to be cooler and when you run them for a long period of time their performance is not going to drop because the heat output is going to remain the same now those are some pretty important things now when will we see systems on a chips with the cortex a73 well of course arm is already working with its partners you can be get pretty much guaranteed that they are already working on system on a chips that will have the a73 in it and I'm already made the test chip and that test chip data will be sent on to its Partners so they can get really quick as they can to getting chips out now there is possibility that we may even see some phones with the cortex a73 in it by the end of this year but if not by the end of this year certainly in 2017 personally I'm quite looking forward to seeing uh the a73 in action it'll be good to Benchmark it and to see its heat output when those phones become available now as I'm sure you know uh it's very popular for CPUs to have eight cores in them now some of those eight core processors have four cortex a53 cores and then four cortex a57 or four cortex a72 cores big do little however there are a whole bunch of mid-range phones that just use eight cores of the same type and that's normally the cortex a53 and some of them might be clocked at let's say 1.5 GHz and some might be clocked at let's say 1 GHz so it's kind of a big do little Arrangement but using the same cortex core now what's really interesting about the cortex a72 is that it's a high performance core but they've actually managed to make it significantly smaller and it's now come to the point where actually it would be just about the same silicon area to produce a hexacore processor with four cortex a53 cores and two cortex a73 cores in the same system on CH and it will take about the same space as an octacore a53 chip now why that's is important is because for the Silicon vendors the amount of silicon space is where they make their money it cost millions of dollars to produce the first chip and then they have to produce millions of them to get their money back now a silicon costs money and for every little square millimeter of silicon that isn't included they can make some more profit now if these manufacturers actually get round to making hexacore chips with two cortex a 73s and four cortex a53 then we'll actually see a 90% boost in single thread performance so that means doing certain activities like uh scrolling on a web page or even loading a web page will actually be significantly faster because the single thread speed is better and as for multi-thread Speed that will actually be 30% better so that's going to be an interesting development for 2017 well my name is Gary Sims from Android authority and I hope you enjoyed this video if you did please do give it a thumbs up also don't forget to connect with with me over at the Android authority uh forums you can use this link here to go and speak to me we can talk about the cortex a73 we can talk about gpus we can talk about any of the other Gary explained videos I have made I'd love to connect with you there also don't forget to subscribe to Android authorities YouTube Channel please download the Android authority app which means you can get access to all of our content on your mobile phone as soon as it becomes available and last but not least don't forget to go over to Android authority.com because we are your source for all things Androidhello there my name is Gary Sims from Android authority now arm's current leading processor design is the cortex a72 and we find it in system on chips like the kir 950 the kir 95 which we find in phones like the Huawei mate 8 and the Huawei P9 also colcom are using it in some of their mid-range chips now today arm have announced the cortex a73 so what does the a73 bring to the table how is it different to the cortex a72 well let me explain now when you use your smartphone the CPU is running and it produces Heat and the amount of heat it produces is a function of the voltage and of the frequency and of the chip design and basically that heat is dissipated through the phone itself now when you do something like open an app or read a web page the CPU usage will Peak momentarily just for a few seconds and then it will drop down again as the app opens or as the web page is rendered and then while you're reading the web page the CPU can be running at a very low level and that's absolutely normal and that's absolutely fine and the amount of heat it produces during that Peak can doesn't really matter because only doing it for a few seconds and the phone very easily dissipates that heat through its chassis and through the body of the phone now when you start doing something complicated with your phone that heat starts to build up and the more it builds up the more heat has to be dissipated through the body of the phone and you've said it yourself you might be holding your phone and it might feel warm to the touch at the back and that's the heat being dissipated because unlike desktops a mobile phone a smartphone doesn't have a heat sink and a cooler and a big fan that's running on the back of it it's all just passive heat dissipation now basically what happens is when you start running your phone at a high workload for a long period of time that heat that's going out through the phone gets to a saturation point and it can't dissipate any more heat so therefore if you keep adding heat the foam will just get hotter and hotter and hotter and in fact it will become uncomfortable in the hand now when it gets to that point the Linux kernel knows what's going on and it will actually bring down the amount of heat being produced by your CPU and it does that using a thing called throttling it will bring down the frequency it may even bring down some things like the voltages so that the heat being produced by the CPU is less and gives the chassis the body of the phone a chance to get rid of all the heat that it already has and then if later on it finds that it actually has uh spare capacity more heat can be produced it will ramp up the CP usage again now this is really interesting because what happens is when it throttles when it brings down the heat it actually brings down the performance so when we run a benchmark and we all run benchmarks I run them to test phones as well but when we run a benchmark we often do it when the phone is cold and it runs and it can produce a peak level of performance for a short amount of time how long do these benchmarks take to run a few seconds 30 seconds a minute and then that's it they're over now of course what happens if you're doing it that Benchmark time and time and time again or you're playing a game for a long period of time or you're doing lots of calculations for a long period of time the performance will actually drop now here's the thing about the cortex a73 the amount of heat it produces during its Peak Performance level just those few seconds that you're using it and the amount of heat it produces with a sustained level of uh workload is almost exactly the same and we've never seen anything like this in a smartphone chip before always there's been an overhead where the CPU can hit a peak and produce more heat just for a short amount of time but when it comes to its sustained level it has to be uh much lower but with the CeX a73 they are the same thing and that is really an amazing thing for designers because first of all it means that the amount of heat that's going to be produced by this CPU is constant and that may give way to New Designs the new ways to make mobile phones make smartphones the materials that are used where the the CPU is placed on the circuit board and so on because now the CPU designer knows that this level is always going to be constant and it also means that when we're playing games when we're using the app the apps that are CPU intensive actually the performance won't drop it will actually stay the same after the first minute and after 30 minutes we should be getting the same level of performance and again that's something we haven't seen before in a mobile system on a chip now before I go any further there are a few caveats the CPU and we're talking about the CPU here is only one part on a system on a chip the GPU is another important part and it produces a significant amount of heat as well and there are other components as well like the modems and the the isps and the dsps and the memory controllers and they all produce an amount of heat as well now if you got a very efficient CPU but the GPU is producing lots of heat the CPU will end up still being throttled because it's the overall heat that is the issue here so that's a caveat we are just talking about the CPU here and not about the GPU and other parts that go with it and there are of course other other technologies that can be used to bring down the heat including big. little which incorporates more power efficient CPU cores with high performance CPU CES there's also things like the intelligent power allocation algorithm that's now in the mainstream uh Linux kernel which means that if the CPU has is running and it's not using all of its performance and some of that heat allocation that thermal budget can be given over to the GPU so the overall temperature can rise to its maximum now in terms of the actual design of the cortex A7 2 I won't go into it too much here in this video there are some interesting things like it uses now a 64k instruction cash things like that you can go over and read the article that I've written over at Android authority.com if those things are of interest to you however what will be of interest to you is What's called the process node now each chip is made using uh silicon using transistors and the idea is the smaller the gap between the transistors and the smaller the transistors the more efficient the chip can be now today's modern chips that we find in the Galaxy S7 uh both the Qualcomm and the Samsung variants are are built using a 16 NM process and arm have already announced that they are working on a test chip at 10 NM and it's expected that the cortex a73 will be able to be built at 10 nanom however it can also be built at 16 nanom in fact it can probably also be built at 28 nanom if that's what uh silicon vendors wanted so let me throw some numbers at you if if it's built at 16 NM like the current uh chips of today like the kin 950 and the kin 995 then the cortex a73 is 10 to 15% faster than the cortex a72 so it's a 10% performance boost but yet a sustained level of performance throughout the whole working lifetime of a program it doesn't dip after a few minutes now also when it's built on the same 160 NM process it produces 20% less heat now that means that component like the GPU can be given a bit more of the thermal budget so they can run faster and they can produce more high performance 3D Graphics now when the cortex 873 is built using a 10 NM process and armor will already prove they can do that you'll find an article over at the Android authority.com website which talks about a chip that they've made with code named artamus and we now know that artamus is in fact the cortex a73 on a 10 nmet process the a73 is 30% faster than the a72 and it's 30% more efficient than the a72 so that means that when we start to see the system on our chips for the a73 they're going to be faster they're going to be cooler and when you run them for a long period of time their performance is not going to drop because the heat output is going to remain the same now those are some pretty important things now when will we see systems on a chips with the cortex a73 well of course arm is already working with its partners you can be get pretty much guaranteed that they are already working on system on a chips that will have the a73 in it and I'm already made the test chip and that test chip data will be sent on to its Partners so they can get really quick as they can to getting chips out now there is possibility that we may even see some phones with the cortex a73 in it by the end of this year but if not by the end of this year certainly in 2017 personally I'm quite looking forward to seeing uh the a73 in action it'll be good to Benchmark it and to see its heat output when those phones become available now as I'm sure you know uh it's very popular for CPUs to have eight cores in them now some of those eight core processors have four cortex a53 cores and then four cortex a57 or four cortex a72 cores big do little however there are a whole bunch of mid-range phones that just use eight cores of the same type and that's normally the cortex a53 and some of them might be clocked at let's say 1.5 GHz and some might be clocked at let's say 1 GHz so it's kind of a big do little Arrangement but using the same cortex core now what's really interesting about the cortex a72 is that it's a high performance core but they've actually managed to make it significantly smaller and it's now come to the point where actually it would be just about the same silicon area to produce a hexacore processor with four cortex a53 cores and two cortex a73 cores in the same system on CH and it will take about the same space as an octacore a53 chip now why that's is important is because for the Silicon vendors the amount of silicon space is where they make their money it cost millions of dollars to produce the first chip and then they have to produce millions of them to get their money back now a silicon costs money and for every little square millimeter of silicon that isn't included they can make some more profit now if these manufacturers actually get round to making hexacore chips with two cortex a 73s and four cortex a53 then we'll actually see a 90% boost in single thread performance so that means doing certain activities like uh scrolling on a web page or even loading a web page will actually be significantly faster because the single thread speed is better and as for multi-thread Speed that will actually be 30% better so that's going to be an interesting development for 2017 well my name is Gary Sims from Android authority and I hope you enjoyed this video if you did please do give it a thumbs up also don't forget to connect with with me over at the Android authority uh forums you can use this link here to go and speak to me we can talk about the cortex a73 we can talk about gpus we can talk about any of the other Gary explained videos I have made I'd love to connect with you there also don't forget to subscribe to Android authorities YouTube Channel please download the Android authority app which means you can get access to all of our content on your mobile phone as soon as it becomes available and last but not least don't forget to go over to Android authority.com because we are your source for all things Android\n"