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CORTex A-5:The Cortex-A5 processor provides a high-value migration path for existing ARM926EJS and ARM1176JZ-S processor designs. It achieves better than ARM1176JZS performance, better power and energy efficiency than the ARM926EJ-S, and 100% CortexA compatibility.
These processors deliver high end features to power and cost sensitive applications, featuring:

Multiprocessing capability for scalable, energy efficient performance

Optional floating point or NEON units for media and signal processing

Full application compatibility with the Cortex-A8, Cortex-A9, and Classic ARM
processors

High performance memory system including caches and memory management unit

CORTex A-7:The Cortex-A7 processor is a very energy efficient applications processor designed to enable low-cost,
fully featured entry-level smart phones in addition to other low-power embedded and consumer
applications.
The processor is fully compatible with other Cortex-A series processors and incorporates all features of
the high-performance Cortex-A15 processor including virtualization support in hardware, Large Physical
Address Extensions (LPAE), NEON advanced SIMD, and AMBA 4 ACE coherency.
The Cortex-A7 processor is widely used as a standalone applications processor in entry level smartphone
applications. It is also used as a LITTLE processor in ARM big.LITTLE processing technology - which
powers high end mobile platforms today.

FEARTURES
Key features of the Cortex-A5 core are:* High performance axi bus:- The Cortex-A5 implements a 64-bit unified AXI bus that
supports

multiple outstanding transactions, and has over 3x the memory bandwidth of the

ARM1176JZ-S.

TRUSTZONE tECHNOLOGY:- Ensures reliable implementation of security applications


ranging from digital rights management to electronic payment. Broad support from
technology and industry Partners.

VFPv4 floating-point unit (optional):- The FPU supports all data-processing


instructions and data types in the VFPv4 architecture and fully supports single-precision and
double-precision add, subtract, multiply, divide, multiply and accumulate, and square root
operations.

The FPU also provides conversions between fixed-point and floating-point data formats,
and floating-point constant instructions.

Thumb-2 instruction set encoding:- Delivers the peak performance of traditional ARM
code while also providing up to a 30% reduction in memory required to store instructions

Configurable L1 Caches:- The power optimized L1 instruction and data Caches are

individually configurable from 4-64K. Optimized instances of ARM SRAMs are available for
Cortex-A5 processor.

Key features of the Cortex-A7 core are:-

Thumb-2 Technology:- Delivers the peak performance of traditional ARM code while also providing up
to a 30% reduction in memory required to store instructions
TrustZone Technology :- Ensures reliable implementation of security applications ranging from digital
rights management to electronic payment
NEON Technology:- NEON technology can accelerate multimedia and signal processing algorithms
such as video encode/decode, 2D/3D graphics, gaming, audio and speech processing, image processing,
telephony, and sound synthesis
Floating point operations:- The floating-point capabilities of the Cortex-A7 processor offer increased
performance for floating point arithmetic used in next generation of consumer products such as Internet
appliances, set-top boxes, and home gateways.

Hardware Virtualization:-Highly efficient hardware support for data management and arbitration,
whereby multiple software environments and their applications are able to access simultaneously the
system capabilities. This enables the realization of devices that are robust, with virtual environments that
are well isolated from each other.
Large Physical Address Extensions (LPAE):- The introduction of Large Physical Address Extensions
(LPAE) enables the processor to access up to 1TB of memory.
Optimized Level 1 Cache:- Performance and power optimized L1 caches combine minimal access
latency techniques to maximize performance and minimize power consumption. Caches are configurable
size 8kB~64KB for instruction and for data. Also providing the option for cache coherence for enhanced
inter-processor communication or support of rich SMP capable OS for simplified multicore software
development

Cortex-A7 Floating-Point Unit (FPU):-The FPU provides high-performance single, and double
precision Floating-Point instructions compatible with the ARM VFPv4 architecture that is software
compatible with previous generations of ARM Floating-Point coprocessor.

ADVANCEMENS IN Cortex-A5 core are:Snoop Control Unit (SCU:The SCU is the central intelligence in the ARM multicore technology and is responsible for
managing the interconnect, arbitration, communication, cache-2-cache and system memory
transfers, cache coherence and other capabilities for all multicore technology enabled
processors.

The Cortex-A5 MPCore processor also exposes these capabilities to other system
accelerators and non-cached DMA driven mastering peripherals so as to increase the
performance and reduce the system wide power consumption by sharing access to the
processor's cache hierarchy.

This system coherence also reduces the software complexity involved in otherwise
maintaining software coherence within each OS driver.
Accelerator Coherence Port (ACP)
This AMBA 3 AXI compatible slave interface on the SCU provides an interconnect point for a
range of system masters that - for overall system performance, power consumption or reasons
of software simplification - are better interfaced directly with the Cortex-A5 MPCore processor.
The interface acts as a standard AMBA 3 AXI slave, and supports all standard read and write
transactions without any additional coherence requirements placed on attached components.
However, any read transactions to a coherent region of memory will interact with the SCU to test
whether the required information is already stored within the processor L1 caches. If it is, it is
returned directly to the requesting component.If it missed in the L1 cache, then there is also the
opportunity to hit in L2 cache before finally forwarding to the main memory.
For write transactions to any coherent memory region, the SCU will enforce coherence before
forwarding the write to the memory system. The transaction may also optionally allocate into the
L2 cache hence removing the power and performance impact of writing directly through to the
off chip memory
Generic Interrupt Controller (GIC:Implementing the recently standardized and architected ARM interrupt controller, the GIC
provides a rich and flexible approach to inter-processor communication and the routing and
prioritisation of system interrupts.
Supporting up to 224 independent interrupts under software control, each interrupt can be
distributed across CPU, hardware, prioritized and routed between the operating system and
TrustZone software management layer.

This routing flexibility and the support for virtualization of interrupts into the operating system,
provides one of the key features required to enhance the capabilities of a solution utilizing a
paravirtualization manager.
Advancemens in corex a7:-:
AMBA 4 AMBA Coherency Extension (ACE)-Lite:This mechanism enables external non-cached bus masters to perform coherent reads and
writes to the Cortex-A7 memory map.
The snoop control unit manages coherency and makes connection through AMBA-4 ACE-Lite;
this acts as a functional replacement for the accelerator coherency port (ACP) that was present
in Cortex-A5 and Cortex-A9. ACE-Lite is particularly useful for applications where the Cortex-A7
CPU is managing IO traffic driven by an external DMA

Comparison of arm cor tex a5 vs a7:-

High power efficiec:-

The new ARM Cortex A7 processor is highly power efficient. Even when
the chip provides 20 percent better performance, it consumes 60
percent less power from the current chips. It is a time technology world
is keenly researching to develop more power efficient products. Of
course, ARM Cortex A7 processor will be a stepping stone for the
companies in developing energy efficient smartphones, tablets, and
other devices.
Small fooprin:- It is of high concern that how much space a processor
will take up on the board of a smartphone or tablet. Even the size and
weight of a product are largely dependent on the footprint of chips

inside them. ARM Cortex A7 as taking less than 0.5mm2 with the
28nm process technology. As a consequence, technology products of
future will be extremely smaller and lighter
Big.LITTLE processing:Big.LITTLE processing power management software will work with the
forthcoming Cortex A7 processor. Big.LITTLE processing lets combine
two different, but compatible processors in a same SoC (system-onchip). You can select between the right processor using the power
management software. The low energy and other highly advanced
features of big.LITTLE also appear on the new ARM Cortex A7.

Large parner basse:-

ARM Cortex A7 processor is licensed by almost all leading silicon


manufacturers in the world. The list goes on Broadcom, Samsung,
Texas Instruments, Freescale, Hisilicon, LG Electronics, Compaq, Linaro,
OK Labs, QNX, Sprint, ST Ericsson, and others. This large partner base,
of course, gives an additional strength for the new ARM Cortex A7
processor. To have a large number of partners means the advanced
ARM chip will get to many more products, and so to the consumers.

High muliasking competence;-

The new ARM Cortex A7 processor will ensure matchless multitasking


performance. These days, we use smartphones and tablets for
anything at all. We can surf the web, make the voice calls, and send
and receive texts. Thanks to multitasking, you can even do many more
activities at a time on a device. While reading an eBook, you can just

move to the mail box and read a just-received email. Cortex A7


processor is to provide greater multitasking performance than ARM
Cortex A15 processor. Get ready to enjoy far richer internet experience
on your handsets with the processor, which is to realize in two years.

ARM Holdings is one of top core processor maker in the world. The
Cambridge-based British multinational semiconductor firm has been a
leading presence in the industry for a long period. ARM is arguably the
best-known of the Silicon Fen firms. Its new processor ARM Cortex A7 is
surely to become a game changer of the entire portable device
industry. We will be having far more energy efficient and lightweight
smartphones, tablets and music players in future, thanks to the new
processor.

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