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Cortex-A72 µarch
General Info
Arch Type	CPU
Designer	ARM Holdings
Manufacturer	TSMC
Introduction	April 23, 2015
Instructions
ISA	ARMv8
Succession
Cortex-A57 Cortex-A73

Cortex-A72 (codename Maia) is the successor to the Cortex-A57, a low-power high-performance ARM microarchitecture designed by ARM Holdings for the mobile market. This microarchitecture is designed as a synthesizable IP core and is sold to other semiconductor companies to be implemented in their own chips. The Cortex-A72, which implemented the ARMv8 ISA, is a performant core which is often combined with a number of lower power cores (e.g. Cortex-A53) in a big.LITTLE configuration to achieve better energy/performance.

Compiler support

Compiler	Arch-Specific	Arch-Favorable
Arm Compiler	-mcpu=cortex-a72	-mtune=cortex-a72
GCC	-mcpu=cortex-a72	-mtune=cortex-a72
LLVM	-mcpu=cortex-a72	-mtune=cortex-a72

If the Cortex-A72 is coupled with the Cortex-A53 or the Cortex-A35 in a big.LITTLE system, GCC also supports the following option:

Compiler	Tune
GCC	-mtune=cortex-a72.cortex-a53 -mtune=cortex-a72.cortex-a35

Architecture

Key changes from Cortex-A57

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Block Diagram

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Memory Hierarchy

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Die

MediaTek Helio X20

• TSMC 20 nm process
• 100 mm² die size
• Quad-core ULP Cortex-A53
  • ~21.81 mm² per cluster
    • ~4.23 mm² per core
• Quad-core efficient Cortex-A53
  • ~29.73 mm² per cluster
    • ~5.41 mm² per core
• Dual-core High-performance Cortex-A72 + 1 MiB L2
  • ~27.36 mm² per cluster
    • ~ 9.60 mm² per core
    • ~ 7.50 mm² for 1 MiB L2

Bibliography

• Mair, Hugh T., et al. "4.3 A 20nm 2.5 GHz ultra-low-power tri-cluster CPU subsystem with adaptive power allocation for optimal mobile SoC performance." Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), 2016 IEEE International. IEEE, 2016.