ARM Announces New Cortex-A78C CPU for Devices Like Always-On Laptops

ARM Cortex-A78C. (Image Credit: ARM)

ARM claims that the Cortex-A78C offers best-in-class energy efficiency with a 50 percent improvement over the last iteration.

• News18.com
• Last Updated: November 05, 2020, 13:29 IST
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UK-based chipmaker ARM has announced a new CPU for next-generation on-the-go devices that could be used in laptops, the ARM Cortex-A78C. The ARM Cortex-A78C is a variant of the ARM Cortex-A78 that is said to power the next generation of flagship smartphones, announced in May this year. The ARM Cortex-A78 was claimed to offer a 20 percent better performance and a 50 percent more efficient energy consumption over last year’s ARM Cortex-A77. While the ARM Corext-A78 is exclusively made for smartphones, the ARM Cortex-A78C can power more on-the-go devices like always-on laptops, ARM said in its announcement.

According to the ARM blog post, the new Cotrex-A78C CPU will support up to 8 big CPU core clusters for a more ‘homogenous multi big core computing.’ In comparison, the standard Cortex-A78 supports four big CPU cores and four small CPU cores in ARM’s DynamIQ arrangement. ARM says that the new eight-core configuration of the ARM Cortex-A78C can scale up multi-threaded performance for improved gaming and productivity. The ARM Cortex-A78C is also compatible with ARM’s new Mali-G78 graphics processor. Further, the ARM Cortex-A78C also increases the L3 cache memory to 8GB, which directly translates into increased performance while working with a lot of data. ARM also claims that the Cortex-A78C offers best-in-class energy efficiency, after a 50 percent improvement over the last iteration.

ARM also said that the Cortex-A78C provides for better data and device security using a Pointer Authentication Code (PAC) that can significantly reduce exploits. ARM, however, did not clearly mention when the new Cortex-A78C CPU will be a part of laptop SoCs or gaming smartphones.