Arm is preparing to release the new Cortex-A320 core by the end of the next month. A 64-bit CPU, the A320 establishes a new low-end tier for Armv9-A cores. It provides an upgrade path for customers using little Armv8 CPUs such as the Cortex-A35 and Cortex-A53. The latter is Arm’s most popular v8-A CPU owing to its low cost and excellent performance relative to die area. The Cortex-A500 series has provided a performance upgrade to the A53 and the similar Cortex-A55 but requires more area and power. The A320, therefore, is a welcome alternative for cost-sensitive designs.
These designs include SoCs targeting industrial and consumer applications. The A320 is also a step up for customers employing Cortex-M, offering multicore scaling and the memory management required to host a high-level operating system. The A320 can alternatively host an RTOS, enabling customers to run similar software on low-cost M-based and high-end A320-based chips.
A Big AI Upgrade
Compared with the A53, the A320 delivers 15% greater integer performance in about the same area for quad-core configurations. Bigger gains come on AI workloads where the A320 delivers 6× the peak INT8 throughput on matrix math because it implements the SVE2 vector instructions. Arm rates a four-core cluster at 250 GOPS. Implemented as a 128-bit data path shared between two cores, the SVE2 unit can also handle BF16 data. Relative to the A35, the performance uplift is even greater. Compared with the Cortex-A520, the new CPU is 50% more power efficient.
For even greater AI performance, customers can combine the A320 with the Arm Ethos-U85 NPU. Arm has updated the U85 driver to eliminate the U85’s previously required Cortex-M when pairing it with the new A-series core. The IP combination can support models with a billion parameters. The company’s Kleidi AI library helps developers get the most from the A320’s capabilities.
Bottom Line
The Armv9-A architecture adds security features and the SVE2 extensions. Adoption has been steady but not quick—likely because of its higher royalty rates and customers having paid-up licenses for Armv8-A cores. Moreover, there haven’t been good replacements for the A35 and A53 until now. The Arm Cortex-A320 is an area-efficient performance and security upgrade and should find use in myriad SoCs, boosting Armv9 adoption.