ARM's A77 chip may help Android phones surpass iPhones in 2020

According to foreign media reports, ARM has recently launched the Cortex-A77 processor, which may help Android phones from companies such as Samsung, Qualcomm and MediaTek achieve a 20% speed increase in 2020 to surpass Apple's iPhone series.

It is reported that the design of the latest ARM Cortex-A77 is licensed to companies such as Samsung, Qualcomm and MediaTek. The licensees combine these chip brains with other components (such as ARM's new MALI-G77 graphics processing unit) into a single package called a system on a chip.

Rene Haas, President of ARM Intellectual Property Licensing (Photo: asia.nikkei)

Rene Haas, president of ARM's intellectual property licensing group, revealed that the performance of the ARM Cortex-A77 is higher than the current A76S chip and requires more battery power. Previously, ARM announced the new chip technology at the Taiwan Computer Show and claimed that MediaTek plans to use it in early 2020.

In addition, can the speed-upgraded ARM A77 help Android phones narrow the performance gap with Apple's iPhone? This is also the significance of the new processor. Data shows that Apple's iPhone XS previously scored 4797 in the Geekbench speed test using Apple's own processor, so the Android phone camp needs a new processor that can compete with it.

ARM says the ARM A77's G77 graphics processing unit design is 40% faster than the current G76. This is mainly applicable to games, where players can get higher graphics or smoother motion, but also for high-resolution displays that require a lot of pixel data.

Although the A77 CPU doesn't have dedicated circuitry for AI like high-end processors from Apple and some other companies, ARM does offer an AI option through its Project Trillium design. Even without that, a lot of software uses plain old CPUs for AI. Haas said ARM's optimization work has greatly advanced the development of AI software frameworks like Google's TensorFlow.