Arm X3 processor gets 25% speed boost, but should still be slower than 2021 iPhones

Having just made a dramatic journey without being bought by Nvidia, Arm has announced its latest flagship processors. Cortex-X3 and Arm Cortex-A715 processors coming soon to your 2023 Android devices.

As usual, these projects will be part of the system-on-a-chip CPU cluster. Assuming a normal layout, Arm’s proposed design will have a 2023 SoC with one large Cortex-X3 core, three Cortex-A715 CPUs, and four small Cortex-A510 cores returning from the current generation.

Arm promises that the X3 processor will provide a 25% performance boost over the X2, while the Cortex A715 claims a “20% power efficiency boost and a 5% performance boost”over the current-gen Cortex A710. Arm claims the A715 is as fast as a 2020 Cortex X1 processor. The A715 is also dropping 32-bit support, making it the last piece of our theoretical flagship SoC to run 64-bit only. The smaller A510 processor is back, but Arm says it’s an “upgraded version”with a 5 percent power cut.

A 25 percent year-over-year improvement for the most powerful processor alone won’t translate to any results in benchmarks. For reference, our testing has shown the Apple A15 to be about 38 percent faster (in single-core and multi-core tests) than the best Android phones, and just a 25 percent increase in one big processor would mean 2023 Android phones will still be a lot slower. than Android phones of 2023. iPhone 2021. Apple uses Arm architecture but not Arm design as Apple seems to be the best Arm chip designer.

At arm’s length from real products

Arm’s announcement is only about designs that other companies can use for an actual consumer chip, and in most cases it’s Qualcomm or Samsung SoCs. The distance between the Arm and the final product means you should take the company’s performance claims with a grain of salt, as they still need to be filtered through someone else’s execution of the Arm design. None of the Arm X2 predictions came true last year. The company promised the CPU “30 percent faster”, when in fact the X2-based chips on the market were slower or equal to the previous year’s X1 chips.

There are already rumors that Qualcomm will not use Arm’s proposed SoC design scheme for its 2023 chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC. Rumor has it that Qualcomm’s layout will consist of one Cortex X3, two Cortex A720s, two current-gen A710 processors, and three A510 processors. The rationale for this could be that Qualcomm doesn’t want to completely drop 32-bit support for the Chinese market just yet, and moving two A710 processors from 2022 to next year will keep the 32-bit train going.

Arm also announced a new GPU design that is not commonly used by most vendors. Qualcomm has its own Adreno GPU division, and Samsung now makes GPUs with AMD. It is best to see the flagship Arm GPU in a product with the rare Mediatek flagship SoC. For what it’s worth, the new ARM GPU has a new brand called “Immortalis GPU “. The Immortalis-G715 is the first GPU designed by Arm to feature hardware ray tracing (Samsung and AMD announced a similar feature last year). Arm claims the GPU is 15% faster than last year.

Arm also hopes that vendors will scale Arm chips with SoC designs aimed at laptops and desktops. The company has unveiled a new configuration that will include eight X3 processors, four A715 processors, and zero small cores. Arm tried the same idea last year when it came up with a chip with eight X2 processors, but we don’t think anyone took up the company’s offer. Qualcomm plans to attack the laptop market in late 2023 with chips developed from its Nuvia acquisition.