ARM readies for the inevitable AI takeover with new processors

By Joe Osborne

ARM, the name behind the processors within much of our smartphones and tablets, is preparing for the imminent artificial intelligence (AI) revolution with a brand-new chip design. The firm calls it DynamIQ – pronounced “dynamic” – an extension of its existing big.LITTLE architecture.

For those who are unfamiliar, big.LITTLE is a processor design philosophy that involves a combination of “big” and “little” cores on the same chip. ARM developed this for enhanced power management, in that only using the big cores for big tasks and shutting them off otherwise ultimately saves juice.

However, ARM was limited in how it could implement the big.LITTLE design and how it could be used by hardware and software makers. For instance, the sets of big and little cores within a given processor were each limited to a specific frequency and power consumption that could not be changed.

It does what it says on the tin

Now, with ARM’s new DynamIQ architecture, an extension of its Cortex-A design, the amount of big and little cores on a single chip can be changed for previously impossible combinations. Furthermore, the power profiles of each core can be individually set, creating custom frequencies for each core in their chip design.

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Source:: techradar.com – Computing Components