ARM CPU roadmap revealed: Ares, Prometheus, Ananke and Mercury in development

ARM Holdings is developing a broad family of general-purpose processing cores that will be made using 10nm and 16nm process technologies, according to a roadmap that was revealed earlier this month. Just like today, the upcoming cores from ARM will address different segments of the market.

Earlier this year ARM introduced its second-generation 64-bit Cortex-A72 core previously known as “Maya”. Later this year the company is expected to unveil code-named “Artemis” general-purpose core that will power system-on-chips made using 16nm FinFET process technology and similar nodes. “Artemis” is intended for premium smartphones and tablets, it features 64-bit ARMv8-A micro-architecture, according to a roadmap published by several web-sites (1, 2).

ARM’s next-generation general-purpose processing cores that will be based on the improved ARMv8-A micro-architecture will be featured inside SoCs due to be available in 2018 or later and will be made using 10nm FinFET process technologies. Code-named “Ares” cores with up to 1.2W thermal design power per core will be used inside application processors for high-end mobile devices as well as servers, whereas “Prometheus” cores (with 0.75W TDP per core) is designed for premium smartphones and tablets. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. will initiate production of 10nm chips sometimes in 2017.

In addition, ARM is working on “Ananke” and “Mercury” cores for ultra-low-power as well as inexpensive mobile devices. Such cores are not designed for leading-edge process technologies and will be used for system-on-chips manufactured using a variety of nodes. Traditionally, small cores like ARM Cortex-A7 have a multi-year lifespan.

ARM did not comment on the news-story.

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KitGuru Says: ARM seems to have rather ambitious plans. It is noteworthy that the company will keep designing its own cores for servers, even despite of the fact that developers of server-class system-on-chips – AMD, Cavium, Qualcomm, Samsung, Nvidia and others – design their own custom ARMv8-A-compatible cores.

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