By: anon (anon.delete@this.anon.com), July 12, 2013 5:40 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
Anon (no.delete@this.thanks.com) on July 12, 2013 10:26 am wrote:
> A Cortex-A7 supports the entire ARMv7 architecture including NEON in 0.5mm^2 per-core on 28HPM. For sure,
> it is not as fast as a Krait or Cortex-A15, but the entire ISA is supported in a very small area. The
> reason for supporting NEON on an A5/A7 class processor is largely to ensure software compatibility across
> the entire mobile processor family and reduce the fragmentation that Linus is railing against.
I don't know how this refutes what I said. If one can claim lack of AVX in Atom is an engineering tradeoff, then lack of particular feature in an ARM core can probably be an engineering tradeoff too.
I don't know why you quote area of the A7 core. People use small ARM cores because cost and power is important, not because it gives them headroom to add features that they won't use.
> A Cortex-A7 supports the entire ARMv7 architecture including NEON in 0.5mm^2 per-core on 28HPM. For sure,
> it is not as fast as a Krait or Cortex-A15, but the entire ISA is supported in a very small area. The
> reason for supporting NEON on an A5/A7 class processor is largely to ensure software compatibility across
> the entire mobile processor family and reduce the fragmentation that Linus is railing against.
I don't know how this refutes what I said. If one can claim lack of AVX in Atom is an engineering tradeoff, then lack of particular feature in an ARM core can probably be an engineering tradeoff too.
I don't know why you quote area of the A7 core. People use small ARM cores because cost and power is important, not because it gives them headroom to add features that they won't use.
