The new hard macro delivers a balance of performance and power
Microprocessor developer ARM has released its Cortex-A15 MP4, a quad-core 28nm processor which allows manufacturers to use them in notebooks and enterprise devices without requring heavy customisation.
The ARM Cortex-A15 MP4 hard macro is designed to operate at a clock frequency of up to 2-GHz and deliver in excess of 20,000-DMIPS of performance, while maintaining the power efficiency of the Cortex-A9 hard macro .
The company says the hard macro has been developed as a result of the synergy between its Cortex processor IP, Artisan physical IP, CoreLink systems IP and its integration capabilities.
The new hard macro was developed using ARM Artisan 12-track libraries and the Processor Optimization Pack (POP) application for the Cortex-A15 on TSMC 28nm HPM process.
The hard macro features an integrated NEON SIMD technology and floating point (VFP), delivers a balance of performance and power and is suitable for wide array of high-performance computing applications, said the company.
ARM Processor Division Marketing vice president Jim Nicholas said, "For SoC designers looking to make a trade-off between the flexibility offered by the traditional RTL-based SoC development strategy and a rapid time to market, with ensured, benchmarked power, performance and area, an ARM hard macro implementation is an ideal, cost-effective solution."
In terms of configuration, the Cortex-A15 MP4 Hard Macro features NEON and Floating Point Unit (FPU) technology, ECC for L1 and L2 RAMs (L1-I cache has single bit parity), 2x32KB L1 and 2MB L2 caches, 224 interrupts, 6 power domains, AMBA Domain Bridge, CoreSight, APB, ATB, Funnel.
