New ARM-Based SoC Core from Samsung

Samsung and Intrinsity announced recently the development of what might turn into the fastest mobile processor core implementation of the ARM Cortex-A8 processor architecture. The new core, codenamed Hummingbird, has been manufactured under the 45nm process technology, and comes with low power needs, 32kbyte data and instruction caches and customizable L2 memory cache, while delivering 2000DMIPS at 1GHz.

The new Hummingbird is expected to prove an ideal processor for smartphone devices, given the fact that it features rather low power requirements, as well as a high operating clock performance. The new SoC is capable of offering manufacturers the possibility to include more advanced processing capabilities to mobile products without sacrificing battery life. In addition, the companies also announced that the core came with an ARM NEON multimedia extension.

“The biggest challenge in mobile processor core design and implementation is to achieve high clock speed performance while keeping the power consumption low,” said Dr. Jae Cheol Son, VP of SoC platform development within Samsung’s system LSI division. “The collaboration between Samsung and Intrinsity combines the best design and implementation technologies in the industry in successfully meeting the aggressive performance and power consumption targets of the Hummingbird”

Hummingbird, which is capable of reaching 1GHz operating clock speed in 45nm LP process, comes with a semi custom design flow. The technology the two companies used, a multi Vdd, multi-frequency design methodology, enables the core to offer high speed even when at 1V, which could make Hummingbird a great option for mobile devices.

According to Bob Russo, CEO of Intrinsity, the new core can deliver all that a mobile device user would like to receive: smoother video, faster gaming and a longer battery life. In order to be able to meet these demands, the new processor implementation is basically built from scratch. One way or another, we should hear more about the new core in the near future.