dmcq (dmcq.delete@this.fano.co.uk) on February 8, 2015 5:14 am wrote:
>
> Agree it was for time to market constraints.

That was my impression too. But may be we are all wrong?
I'd don't know what changed within ARM application processor group, but recently they have very high success rate: A7, A12, A53, A17 are all pretty good. A15 was the only one less than stellar. May be, A57 is also so good that Qualcomm simply can't produce anything sufficiently better to be worth the effort?

> From the time they learnt about the Apple A7 would
> have been too short, they obviously thought they had another six months at least in hand before
> they needed such a chip. Even without that using an ARM design for the first version is a reasonable
> choice to make certain all the design bugs are ironed out doing a new architecture.
>
> Personally I expected ARM to do a 64 bit version of the A17 before they did an A57
> follow on like he A72, and that any A57 follow on would be aimed at servers and
> have the new atomic instructions in. So I was wrong on both counts about that.