ARM Benchmarks Flavors of Big-Little Multiprocessing
Peter Clarke, European News Director
8/6/2013 12:00 PM EDT
There seems to be a certain amount of excitement brewing around Samsung's Exynos Octa versus Qualcomm's quad-core Snapdragons and MediaTek's forthcoming True Octa-ness. I thought I would share some of the "big-little" thinking of ARM that I received on a recent trip to Cambridge, Mass.
Big-little is the approach whereby differently optimized cores implementing the same instruction set architecture are deployed in an SoC. This means tasks can be assigned to different cores depending on the context in which the device finds itself. However, it should also be remembered that big-little is a special case and does not cover the entire heterogeneous multiprocessing (HMP) landscape. HMP also includes the possibility of running software tasks on CPU cores, graphics processing units (GPUs), and other cores besides.
But ignoring GPU-compute at present, big-little comes in three flavors. There may be more flavors in the future. The technique may even evolve into little-big-biggest-other, but for now, ARM identifies three modes of operating big-little.
![]() |
E-mail This Article | ![]() |
![]() |
Printer-Friendly Page |
|
Arm Ltd Hot IP
Related News
- Big-little is sweet 16
- TSMC and ARM set new benchmarks for performance and power efficiency with first announced FinFET silicon with 64-bit ARM big.LITTLE technology
- Samsung Primes Exynos 5 Octa for ARM big.LITTLE Technology with Heterogeneous Multi-Processing Capability
- Are ARM's big-little days numbered?
- ARM tips 64-bit 'big-little' processors, partners
Breaking News
- VeriSilicon introduces AcuityPercept: an AI-powered automatic ISP tuning system
- Avant Technology Partners with COSEDA Technologies to Enhance System-Level Software Solutions
- intoPIX Powers Ikegami's New IPX-100 with JPEG XS for Seamless & Low-Latency IP Production
- Tower Semiconductor and Alcyon Photonics Announce Collaboration to Accelerate Integrated Photonics Innovation
- Qualcomm initiates global anti-trust complaint about Arm
Most Popular
- Qualcomm initiates global anti-trust complaint about Arm
- Sarcina Technology launches AI platform to enable cost-effective customizable AI packaging solutions
- EnSilica Agrees $18m 7 Year Design and Supply ASIC Contract
- Siemens to accelerate customer time to market with advanced silicon IP through new Alphawave Semi partnership
- Tower Semiconductor and Alcyon Photonics Announce Collaboration to Accelerate Integrated Photonics Innovation