ARM has unveiled the latest Cortex-A17 processor that promises to be the “most efficient mid-range solution” aimed at mid-range smartphones and smart TVs. These processors, scalable up to four cores, promise a performance improvement of 60% from the older and widely-used Cortex-A7 chipsets.
The 28nm Cortex-A17 processors also leverage on ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture, combining four Cortex-A17 processors with four Cortex-A7 processors, and can operate on frequencies above 2GHz. The Cortex-A17 processor is also paired with a Mali-T720 GPU, which supports OpenGL ES 3.0 for accelerated 3D graphics rendering.
With a vastly improved mid-range offering over the current Cortex-A7 processor running on most mid-and-lower-end Android smartphones, the Cortex-A17 processor should enable more competitive mid-range smartphones, especially among the Chinese manufacturers. Don’t expect these chips to appear anytime soon, though: the ARM Cortex-A17 processors are likely to only make an appearance in 2015.
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