Cortex A17

ARM has been doing a good job figuring out its PR strategy as of late. In the span of a couple of years we went from very little outward communication to semi-deep-dives on architecture and a regular cadence of IP disclosures. ARM continues its new trend today with the announcement of its 2015 mid-range CPU IP: the Cortex A17. As its name implies, the Cortex A17 is a 32-bit ARMv7-A CPU design (64-bit ARMv8 cores belong to the Cortex A50 series - e.g. A53/A57). The best way to think about Cortex A17 is as an evolution of the recently announced Cortex A12, rather than anything to do with the Cortex A15. ARM's Cortex A17 takes the basic 2-wide out-of-order architecture of the Cortex A12 and...