Date: 18/06/2012

Renesas licenses ARM's Big. LITTLE

Renesas Electronics and Renesas Mobile Corporation have licensed the ARM Cortex-A7 MPCore and ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore processors. Renesas Mobile to use these IPs in designing new applications processors, communications processors and LTE / HSPA+ multi-mode smartphone.

ARM's Big.LITTLE allows seamless switching between the two processors ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore processor and energy-efficiency of the Cortex-A7 processor. Big.LITTLE selects the optimum processor cluster for each task to reduce energy consumption of the main processor by up to 70 percent.

Shinichi Yoshioka, senior executive vice president and COO at Renesas Mobile commented: “The market demands ever increasing performance in low power devices and Renesas Mobile is well placed to deliver world-beating application processors and communications processors. Our skills lie in systems design and the integration and optimization of highly complex, LTE multi-mode cellular System-on-Chips. Our smart design approach and ARM's leading processors with big.LITTLE processing is a winning combination.”

“Low power processing is at the core of ARM's heritage. The introduction of big.LITTLE processing builds on this heritage to address the challenge of providing optimum performance as well as the always-on, always connected experience consumers expect,” said Simon Segars, executive vice president and general manager, processor and physical IP divisions, ARM. “We are pleased to extend our long-standing relationship with Renesas and help them develop innovative and differentiated solutions based on the latest ARM technology.”

Some of ARM processor powered chips from Renesas: A dual-core A9 implementation drives the Renesas Mobile MP5232, a LTE Cat-4 capable mobile platform. This communications processor combines Renesas Mobile's world's fastest triple mode (LTE, DC-HSPA+ and GSM) modem with the application processor on a single die reducing space, power and product cost, as per Renesas.
Author: Srinivasa Reddy N