ARM Cortex-A8

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

ARM Cortex-A8

General information
Launched	2005
Designed by	ARM Holdings
Common manufacturer	TSMC
Performance
Max. CPU clock rate	0.6 GHz  to at least 1.0 GHz[1][additional citation(s) needed]
Cache
L1 cache	32 KiB/32 KiB
L2 cache	512 KiB
Architecture and classification
Instruction set	ARMv7-A
Physical specifications
Cores	1

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

Main article: Comparison of ARMv7-A cores

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 ^[4]
• 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 ^[5]
• Rockchip RK2918, RK2906 ^[6]
• Samsung Exynos 3110
• TI OMAP3
• TI Sitara ARM Processors
• Conexant CX92755 ^[7]

See also

• Electronics portal

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

References

1. "Cortex-A8". ARM Developer. Retrieved January 3, 2023.
2. Gupta, Rahul (April 26, 2013). "ARM Cortex: The force that drives mobile devices". The Mobile Indian. Retrieved 2023-07-30.
3. Cortex-A8 Specification Summary; ARM Holdings.
4. Williamson, David, ARM Cortex A8: A High Performance Processor for Low Power Applications (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-01-01
5. "i.MX51 Applications Processor and Linux Hands on" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-11-19. Retrieved 2011-10-20.
6. "RK29XX". Archived from the original on 2011-11-05.
7. "CX97255" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-11-19.

External links

ARM Holdings

• Official website
• ARM Cortex-A8 Technical Reference Manuals