ARM Cortex-A17

The ARM Cortex-A17 is a 32-bit processor core implementing the ARMv7-A architecture, licensed by ARM Holdings. Providing up to four cache-coherent cores, it serves as the successor to the Cortex-A9 and replaces the previous ARM Cortex-A12 specifications.[2] ARM claims that the Cortex-A17 core provides 60% higher performance than the Cortex-A9 core, while reducing the power consumption by 20% under the same workload.[1]

ARM Cortex-A17

General information
Designed by	ARM Holdings
Cache
L1 cache	32–64 KiB instruction 32 KiB data[1]
L2 cache	256 KiB–8 MiB[1] (configurable L2 cache controller)
Architecture and classification
Microarchitecture	ARMv7-A
Physical specifications
Cores	1–4, can be combined with less powerful A7 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration[1]
History
Predecessor	ARM Cortex-A12 ARM Cortex-A9

ARM renamed Cortex-A12 to a variant of Cortex-A17 since the second revision of the A12 core in early 2014, because these two were indistinguishable in performance and all features available in the A17 were used as upgrades in the A12.[3][4]

New features of the Cortex-A17 specification, not found in the Cortex-A9 specification, are all improvements from the third-generation ARM Cortex-A, which also includes the Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A15:[3]

• Hardware virtualization and 40-bit Large Physical Address Extensions (LPAE) addressing
• Full-system coherency, bringing support for the big.LITTLE architecture[1]
• NEON unit, for floating-point data and SIMD processing
• Deeper integer instruction pipeline, with 10–12 stages[5]
• Full out-of-order execution design with load/store units

Modern Linux kernel implementations will report and support the above features thus :

processor       : 3
model name      : ARMv7 Processor rev 1 (v7l)
BogoMIPS        : 48.00
Features        : half thumb fastmult vfp edsp thumbee neon vfpv3 tls vfpv4 idiva idivt vfpd32 lpae evtstrm
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant     : 0x0
CPU part        : 0xc0d
CPU revision    : 1

See also

• ARM architecture
• Comparison of ARMv7-A cores
• Comparison of ARMv8-A cores
• List of applications of ARM cores
• List of ARM cores

References

1. Nathan Kirsch (February 11, 2014). "ARM Cortex-A17 To Have 60% More Performance Than Cortex-A9 Processor". legitreviews.com. Retrieved March 24, 2015.
2. "ARM Cortex-A17 Processor". arm.com. 2014. Retrieved February 13, 2015.
3. Anand Lal Shimpi (February 11, 2014). "ARM Cortex A17: An Evolved Cortex A12 for the Mainstream in 2015". AnandTech. Retrieved September 30, 2014.
4. Stefan Rosinger (October 1, 2014). "ARM Cortex-A17 / Cortex-A12 processor update". community.arm.com.
5. Anand Lal Shimpi (July 17, 2013). "The ARM Diaries, Part 2: Understanding the Cortex A12". AnandTech. Retrieved February 13, 2015.

External links

• Official website