Arm Holdings publicly disclosed its CPU road map for the first time on Thursday, August 16, covering chip designs that will be released through 2020. Typically, CPU makers keep these details under wraps in a non-disclosure agreement, but the company came forward with its plans to show how its CPU designs will advance the always-on, always-connected laptop experience.
Arm Holdings, or simply Arm, designs processor architectures that are separate from the x86-based versions used by Intel and AMD. These designs target high performance and a low power requirement, ideal for mobile devices. Arm licenses out these designs to Qualcomm, Samsung, Nvidia, and others.
Arm’s latest design is the Cortex-A76 processor core promising 35 percent more performance than its previous design. Introduced in May, the Cortex-A76 aims to deliver the same performance of a competing laptop-based processor but with a lower power draw suited for smartphones. The result is a laptop with 20 or more hours of battery life with no sacrifice in computing performance.
“[Cortex-A76] is the foundational CPU IP for the first 7nm SoCs expected to be in production later this year,” Arm states. “More importantly, Cortex-A76 represents the continuation of the trajectory that will increase performance at a staggering pace, enabling consumers to do more with their smartphones and level the performance playing field against mass-market laptop CPUs from the competition.”
Arm compares its Cortex-A76 design with Intel’s seventh-generation Core i5-7300U processor. Intel’s two-core chip, released at the beginning of 2017, has a base speed of 2.6GHz, a maximum speed of 3.5GHz, and draws a mere 15 watts of power on average. Arm projects that processors based on its Cortex-A76 design will hit 3GHz while drawing less than five watts of power.
The takeaway from this is that Arm’s design will supposedly be on par with Intel’s older chip, but at a lower power requirement. What is important to note is that Intel’s Core i5 processor targets laptops, not smartphones. Also, note that Arm doesn’t compare its design to Intel’s current eighth-generation chips.
But that is just part of Arm’s story. While chips based on the Cortex-A76 design will be released in 10nm and 7mn variants in 2018, Arm’s “Deimos” design targets 2019 using the 7nm process node. The company says this design will provide 15 percent or more increased performance than the just-launched Cortex-A76 design.
Part of Arm’s pitch includes what the company calls DynamicIQ. It’s a design that clusters up to eight processor cores together, enabling chipmakers to mix and match Arm-based CPU cores. For instance, one popular design is to use six low-performance cores to handle web browsing and Facebook trolling, and two high-performance cores to deal with gaming and other high-computational tasks. All eight cores are crammed into one chip.
DynamicIQ is part of Arm’s current Cortex-A76 design as well as 2019’s “Deimos” architecture and 2020’s “Hercules” design. According to Arm, this latter design will not only be based on 7nm and 5nm process nodes but improve “power and area efficiency by 10 percent.” That is on top of the performance gains provided by 5nm process technology, the company added.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.