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Which Cortex-A core is most suitable for UI + Cloud + Firmware Upgrade HD Video embedded Linux product?

jawahar K

Hi ARM Community,

We are developing a commercial embedded Linux product (HMI machine)
using a Cortex-A application processor with the following workload:

- Qt/QML based touch UI (animations, transitions)
- HD video playback (1080p)
- Cloud application (MQTT, TLS, OTA updates)
- Continuous background logging
- 24x7 operation

We are evaluating three options:
- Cortex-A17
- Cortex-A55
- Cortex-A72

Our concern is choosing a core that can reliably handle UI + cloud +
video simultaneously without UI lag or cloud instability.

From our initial analysis, Cortex-A72 appears more suitable due to
higher single-core performance and out-of-order execution, while
A55 seems optimized for efficiency and A17 is older architecture.

We would appreciate guidance from ARM experts on:
1. Which core is most suitable for this workload?
2. Is Cortex-A55 sufficient for such multitasking workloads?
3. Is Cortex-A17 still recommended for new designs?

Thanks in advance for your advice.

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  • 0 Arm Employee Badge

    All A-profile CPUs can run the same kinds of software, the difference between them is going to be performance and energy efficiency. What core is suitable really depends on what your device form factor requires (e.g. thermal solution, etc), and the software requirements of your workload and how much software it needs to run in a certain amount of time. It's impossible to tell you which CPU you need without knowing the details of your workload's performance requirements - in general the best approach would be to buy some development boards or phones with a similar CPU and benchmark your workload (or a proxy of it) on real hardware.

    I would also note that UI rendering and video decoding would normally be handled by accelerator hardware outside of the CPU, so that's not really a CPU selection problem, and would be a question for a SoC provider.

    HTH, 
    Pete

Reply
  • 0 Arm Employee Badge

    All A-profile CPUs can run the same kinds of software, the difference between them is going to be performance and energy efficiency. What core is suitable really depends on what your device form factor requires (e.g. thermal solution, etc), and the software requirements of your workload and how much software it needs to run in a certain amount of time. It's impossible to tell you which CPU you need without knowing the details of your workload's performance requirements - in general the best approach would be to buy some development boards or phones with a similar CPU and benchmark your workload (or a proxy of it) on real hardware.

    I would also note that UI rendering and video decoding would normally be handled by accelerator hardware outside of the CPU, so that's not really a CPU selection problem, and would be a question for a SoC provider.

    HTH, 
    Pete

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