ARM outlines chip switching tech for longer battery life

 

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By Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 20 Oct 2011 at 12:28

ARM claims its latest processor – the Cortex-A7 MPCore - is five times more energy efficient that its current A8 model, and will cut power use while boosting performance.

The entry-level A7 is a central part of a concept – dubbed Big.LITTLE processing – that will allow handset manufacturers to put two processors side by side in their devices in a bid to preserve battery life without affecting performance.

The idea marries the high performance of the Cortex A15 MPCore with the low-power benefits of the A7, with the more powerful chip only kicking in when it’s really needed.

The company claims the Big.LITTLE process “allows devices to select the right processor for the right task based on performance requirements”, with the selection being transparent to the software running on the processors.

“The processors appear identical from an applications software perspective,” the company said. “The ‘little’, lowest-power processor – in this case, the Cortex-A7 - runs the operating system and applications for basic always-on, always-connected tasks, such as social media and audio playback.

“The OS and apps can then be migrated to the higher-performance processor as demands increase for high end tasks, such as navigation and gaming. The time for this migration is in the order of 20 microseconds.”

The development could lead to longer battery life, although screens remain by far the biggest drain on smartphone batteries.