Fujitsu Semiconductor Licences ARM big.LITTLE and Mali-T624 Technologies

Fujitsu Semiconductor’s first SoC solution under this agreement will incorporate a dual-core Cortex-A15 processor and dual-core Cortex-A7 processor intended for a wide range of consumer and industrial devices, and for visualization systems which enable users to control data and programs via on-screen graphics. Fujitsu Semiconductor brings their extensive experience in these markets to realize the benefits offered by the big.LITTLE combination, while optimizing graphics plus graphics processing unit Compute functionality. Utilizing a quad-core version of the Mali-T624 GPU to take over specific tasks from the CPU greatly enhances overall system performance and user experience, while improving system power.

ARM big.LITTLE technology answers one of today's biggest industry challenges: How to create a system on chip that provides both high performance as well as improved energy efficiency. big.LITTLE processing brings scalable and efficient performance to the tightly-coupled combination of two ARM dual CPU clusters. This arrangement is transparent to computer programs, with the big.LITTLE multi-processing software automatically choosing the right processor for the right job. This is one of the most efficient ways to build an ARM quad-core system and delivers up to 70% energy savings with peak performance. Find out more about big.LITTLE technology here.

Consumers’ expectations of visual interfaces and user experiences continue to rise. The industry’s focus is on how these expectations can be met in an exciting yet energy efficient way. Both ARM Cortex CPUs and Mali processors have been designed with this key demand in mind. The combination of ARM Cortex and Mali enables not only the underlying ARM architecture benefits to be realized but also enables tasks to be assigned across the system to be run on the optimal processor. This flexibility is created through big.LITTLE technology and Mali GPU market-leading support for GPU Compute functionality.

“Being able to bring a flexible, high-performance solution to address the dynamic market associated with visual computing is vital for Fujitsu Semiconductor.” said Mitsugu Naito, executive vice president, Advanced Products Business Unit, Fujitsu Semiconductor Limited. ”The energy-efficient pairing of ARM Cortex CPUs in a big.LITTLE configuration with the market-leading performance and GPU Compute functionality offered by the Mali-T624 GPU opens up a wide range of opportunities for the features offered to end consumers and industrial applications.”

“ARM is pleased to be building on a close relationship with Fujitsu Semiconductor and we are excited about the potential offered by combining big.LITTLE technology with Mali GPUs for a wider range of end devices,” said Pete Hutton, executive vice president & general manager, Media Processing Division, ARM. “The capabilities of next-generation ARM Cortex and Mali GPUs in concert will make innovative features possible for consumers and businesses with market-leading energy efficiency at the system level.”