Since we launched Cortex-A17 and Cortex-A12 processors, we’ve seen wide adoption with customers planning to use these cores in a range of phones, tablets and other consumer devices. These ARMv7-A cores offer leading 32-bit performance and efficiency for mobile and consumer markets, and we are very excited about current and future products that will be shipping in the coming months.
Originally, the Cortex-A12 and Cortex-A17 processors were launched as two distinct parts, as they delivered different feature sets and performance points. Since then, due to the consistent demand for more performance and efficiency from the market, alongside ARM’s focus on continuously improving the products, has led us to introduce the performance improvements added by the Cortex-A17 processor into the latest maintenance release of the Cortex-A12. Now both processors deliver equivalent performance levels.
The Cortex-A17 processor also added big.LITTLE support. Whilst many partners are using this to provide heterogeneous Cortex-A17 and Cortex-A7 processor solutions, some are also delivering standalone Cortex-A17 processor solutions, which are now almost indistinguishable from Cortex-A12 only solutions. For this reason, and to ease support for our customers and their partners, we have taken the decision to use the “Cortex-A17” name to refer to both processors in the future. We have therefore removed references to the Cortex-A12 processor from the ARM.com web-site and in the future, all engineering documentation and support available from the ARM Infocenter will be provided under the Cortex-A17 processor identity.
Faster processing and more efficiency in the mobile power envelope are two key properties of the Cortex-A17 processor. It delivers a 60% single-threaded performance uplift over the popular Cortex-A9 processor at increased efficiency. Additional Floating Point Unit (FPU) and NEON performance allows workloads to be calculated 50% faster compared to previous devices resulting in significantly improved user experience:
The Cortex-A17 processor builds the ideal platform for any demanding consumer SoC requiring great performance for best-in-class energy efficiency. For more information about the ARM Cortex-A17 processor and its companion IP, please visit our website.
All information about the production version of Cortex-A12 is now part of the Cortex-A17 documentation. Please check http://infocenter.arm.com for any available maintenance updates of the documentation.
Now that all A12 documents have been removed from the infocenter,
where can I find the TRM and Errata for an older version of the A12?
The Cortex-A17 processor offers additional performance and big.LITTLE capabilities that allow vastly different use cases in conjunction with the Cortex-A7 processor. With the performance enhancements we've made to the production version of Cortex-A12, the difference between both products is now mostly on SoC/hardware level that is transparent to software and user experience. Hence, referring to just Cortex-A17 will streamline software development work.
Are there new features for the new Cortex-A17?
Otherwise, has Cortex-A12 just only merged into Cortex-A17?
Good news. Maybe Cortex-A17/12 need more successful stories to show their advantage over ARMv8 64bits cores.