ARM Cortex-A8 explained

ARM Cortex-A8
Produced-Start:	2005
Slowest:	0.6 GHz
Fastest:	at least 1.0 GHz^[1]
Designfirm:	ARM Holdings
Manuf1:	TSMC
Arch:	ARMv7-A
Numcores:	1
L1cache:	32 KiB/32 KiB
L2cache:	512 KiB

The ARM Cortex-A8 is a 32-bit processor core licensed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARMv7-A architecture.

Compared to the ARM11, the Cortex-A8 is a dual-issue superscalar design, achieving roughly twice the instructions per cycle. The Cortex-A8 was the first Cortex design to be adopted on a large scale in consumer devices.^[2]

Features

Key features of the Cortex-A8 core are:

• Frequency from 600 MHz to 1 GHz and above
• Superscalar dual-issue microarchitecture
• NEON SIMD instruction set extension ^[3]
• 13-stage integer pipeline and 10-stage NEON pipeline
• VFPv3 floating-point unit
• Thumb-2 instruction set encoding
• Jazelle RCT (also known as ThumbEE instruction set)
• Advanced branch prediction unit with >95% accuracy
• Integrated level 2 Cache (0–4 MiB)
• 2.0 DMIPS/MHz

Chips

Several system-on-chips (SoC) have implemented the Cortex-A8 core, including:

• Allwinner A1X
• Apple A4
• Freescale Semiconductor i.MX51 ^[4]
• Rockchip RK2918, RK2906 ^[5]
• Samsung Exynos 3110
• TI OMAP3
• TI Sitara ARM Processors
• Conexant CX92755 ^[6]

See also

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

External links

ARM Holdings

• • ARM Cortex-A8 Technical Reference Manuals

Notes and References

1. Web site: Cortex-A8. ARM Developer. January 3, 2023.
2. News: ARM Cortex: The force that drives mobile devices . . April 26, 2013 . 2023-07-30 . Gupta . Rahul.
3. http://arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a8.php?tab=Specifications Cortex-A8 Specification Summary; ARM Holdings.
4. Web site: i.MX51 Applications Processor and Linux Hands on . 2011-10-20 . https://web.archive.org/web/20111119202439/http://www.freescale.com/files/training/doc/APF_CON_T0805_i.MX515.pdf . 2011-11-19 . dead .
5. Web site: RK29XX . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20111105004637/http://www.rock-chips.com/index.php?do=prodnew . 2011-11-05 .
6. Web site: CX97255 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20121119093431/http://www.conexant.com/servlets/DownloadNewsServlet/03282011-1.pdf . 2012-11-19 .