Can't find many microprocessor manufacturers with Cortex-A7 architecture?

What kind of part are you after?

From a very quick search, Allwinner has a Cortex-A7 part and Raspberry Pi 2 was Cortex-A7 so presumably so does Broadcom.

There was also a press release saying that Atmel had licence Cortex A7 but so far they have only released A5 parts and no visibility on A7 devices.

See link below:

Atmel License ARM Mali Video and Display Technology

Atmel seem to have reused their A5 core and added an additional 128k L2 cache + NEON + Security

http://www.atmel.com/products/microcontrollers/arm/sama5.aspx

Thanks. I am looking for core processors for industrial control purposes. Allwiner and Raspbery seem to only have one model that offers Cortex-A7 architecture.

I'd like to add Rockchip to the list.

If you want to build your own board using a Cortex-A7 based CPU, you could purchase a single Allwinner A20 from either Olimex or eBay.

You can also get stencils for the A20 on eBay.

One advantage of the A20 is that you can get it in a LQFP package, which is possible to "solder at home".

(You can also purchase a single Allwinner A10, which is Cortex-A8, from Olimex and eBay, if you wish; I think the footprint might be the same as the A20, if I recall correctly, but no promises).

So far, I know of the following:

Marvell, Broadcom, Allwinner, Rockchip, Freescale (now NXP), Mediatek, Qualcomm and Samsung.

-You may find that the Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 may still be faster than the Cortex-A7 in many areas.

If you want to try out the A20, you could try purchasing a board like Lamobo/Banana Pi, CubieBoard2 or similar (see armbian.com for a larger list of boards; click the "A20" button to select the CPU).

Personally I would stick to the mainstream Silicon vendors.

The most obvious choice would be NXP who have plenty of A7 and A9 devices in their iMX families.

Atmel ATSAMA5Dx family will give something like @90% of the performance of A7 and may also be suitable.

If you don't need an A class processor then try looking at Cortex-M7 options from ST or Atmel

I have seen many A20's used for phones and tablets applications. I am actually working on an industrial project and they want an industrial processor for their board. Is A20 a safe option for industrial control systems? 

NXP seems to be a major supplier for processors and it is what my research outcome is pointing out as an industrial processor with Cortex-A7. But I don't want to jump into conclusion and am still looking to see other options. For Cortex-A8 and A9 TI also has processors but what my research is showing is that Cortex-A7 is a better architecture.

These days, "best architecture" might be difficult to interpret for several reasons (I'll mention some of them below).

If it does not have to be a Cortex-A7, you have many opitons.

The Cortex-A7 architecture is a few years old now, so there are better architectures (both 32-bit and 64-bit) available.

The current 'top' architecture is the 64-bit Cortex-A72.

I believe that the current 32-bit 'top' architecture is he Cortex-A17.

Texas Instruments certainly makes high quality ARM processors and so do Marvell Semiconductor.

I am positive that you have some criteria for the processor's capabilities.

I'm thinking something like

• Cost effective
• Energy efficient
• Speed
• Required hardware interfaces (mention specific requirements)
• GPU requirements
• External RAM technology
• Gbit Ethernet
• External display interface
• Must be able to run Linux at a decent speed
• Architecture (32 bit or 64 bit or "don't care")
• 1 pcs. availablility (samples)
• (add more, delete some and rearrange as needed)

If you need single tasks to execute at highest possible speeds, it's wise to choose an implementation with fewer cores clocked at higher speeds, compared to an implementation with many cores clocked at lower speeds.

Example: A quad-core Cortex-A53 running at 2GHz might outperform an octa-core Cortex-A53 running at 1.5GHz.

For instance: Marvell Semiconductor ARMADA 7020 .. 8040 might be a very good idea if you need high speed communication.

Personal opinion: If you need to connect a hard disk RAID, I would recommend ARMADA + Marvell 88SE9230 + Western Digital drives (due to my experience with many different drive vendors).

If you need to do video or Digital Signal Processing, I'd recommend having a look at Texas Instruments' Cortex-A8 .. Cortex-A15 product range.

If you need real-time video processing (of for instance incoming camera images), then you might want to have a look at Amlogic's Quad-Core Cortex-A53 based S905.

Note: Even a small 100 MHz Cortex-M3 can be fast enough for analyzing images in real-time and taking actions based upon the images, if the firmware is written well.