# ARM Cortex-A15

The ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore is a 32-bit processor core licensed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARMv7-A architecture. It is a multicore processor with out-of-order superscalar pipeline running at up to 2.5 GHz.

## Overview

ARM has claimed that the Cortex-A15 core is 40 percent more powerful than the Cortex-A9 core with the same number of cores at the same speed. The first A15 designs came out in the autumn of 2011, but products based on the chip did not reach the market until 2012.
Key features of the Cortex-A15 core are:
* 40-bit Large Physical Address Extensions (LPAE) addressing up to 1 TB of RAM with a 32-bit virtual address space.
* 15 stage integer/17–25 stage floating point pipeline, with out-of-order speculative issue 3-way superscalar execution pipeline
* 4 cores per cluster, up to 2 clusters per chip with CoreLink 400 (CCI-400, an AMBA-4 coherent interconnect) and 4 clusters per chip with CCN-504. ARM provides specifications but the licensees individually design ARM chips, and AMBA-4 scales beyond 2 clusters. The theoretical limit is 16 clusters; 4 bits are used to code the CLUSTERID number in the CP15 register (bits 8 to 11).
* DSP and NEON SIMD extensions onboard (per core)
* VFPv4 Floating Point Unit onboard (per core)
* Hardware virtualization support
* Thumb-2 instruction set encoding to reduce the size of programs with little impact on performance
* TrustZone security extensions
* Jazelle RCT for JIT compilation
* Program Trace Macrocell and CoreSight Design Kit for unobtrusive tracing of instruction execution
* 32 KB data + 32 KB instruction L1 cache per core
* Integrated low-latency level-2 cache controller, up to 4 MB per cluster

## Chips

First implementation came from Samsung in 2012 with the Exynos 5 Dual, which shipped in October 2012 with the Samsung Chromebook Series 3 (ARM version), followed in November by the Google Nexus 10.
Press announcements of current implementations:
* Broadcom SoC
* HiSilicon K3V3
* Nvidia Tegra 4 (Wayne) and Tegra K1.
* Samsung Exynos 5 Dual, Quad and Octa
* ST-Ericsson Nova A9600 (cancelled) (dual-core @ 2.5 GHz over 20k DMIPS)
* Texas Instruments OMAP 5 SoCs and Sitara AM57x family
Other licensees, such as LG, are expected to produce an A15 based design at some point.

### Systems on a chip

| Model Number | Semiconductor technology | CPU | GPU | Memory interface | Wireless radio technologies | Availability | Utilizing devices |
| HiSilicon K3V3 | 28 nm HPL | big.LITTLE architecture using 1.8 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 + dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 | Mali-T628 | | | H2 2014 | |
| Nvidia Tegra 4 T40 | 28 nm HPL | 1.9 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 + 1 low power core | Nvidia GeForce @ 72 core, 672 MHz, 96.8 GFLOPS = 48 PS + 24 VU × 0.672 × 2 (96.8 GFLOPS)(support DirectX 11+, OpenGL 4.X, and PhysX) | 32-bit dual-channel DDR3L or LPDDR3 up to 933 MHz (1866 MT/s data rate) | Category 3 (100 Mbit/s) LTE | Q2 2013 | Nvidia Shield Tegra Note 7 |
| Nvidia Tegra 4 AP40 | 28 nm HPL | 1.2-1.8 GHz quad-core + low power core | Nvidia GPU 60 cores (support DirectX 11+, OpenGL 4.X, and PhysX) | 32-bit dual-channel 800 MHz LPDDR3 | Category 3 (100 Mbit/s) LTE | Q3 2013 | |
| Nvidia Tegra K1 | 28 nm HPm | 2.3 GHz quad-core + battery saver core | Kepler SMX (192 CUDA cores, 8 TMUs, 4 ROPs) | 32-bit dual-channel DDR3L, LPDDR3 or LPDDR2 | | Q2 2014 | Jetson TK1 development board, Lenovo ThinkVision 28, Xiaomi MiPad, Shield Tablet |
| Texas Instruments OMAP5430 | 28 nm | 1.7 GHz dual-core | PowerVR SGX544MP2 @ 532 MHz + dedicated 2D graphics accelerator | 32-bit dual-channel 532 MHz LPDDR2 | | Q2 2013 | phyCore-OMAP5430 |
| Texas Instruments OMAP5432 | 28 nm | 1.5 GHz dual-core | PowerVR SGX544MP2 @ 532 MHz + dedicated 2D graphics accelerator | 32-bit dual-channel 532 MHz DDR3 | | Q2 2013 | DragonBox Pyra, SVTronics EVM, Compulab SBC-T54 |
| Texas Instruments AM57x | 28 nm | 1.5 GHz single or dual-core | PowerVR SGX544MP2 @ 532 MHz + dedicated 2D graphics accelerator | 32-bit dual-channel 532 MHz DDR3 | | Q4 2015 | BeagleBoard-X15, BeagleBone AI, Elesar Titanium |
| Texas Instruments 66AK2x | 28 nm | 1.5 GHz single, dual, and quad core devices | 1-8 C66x DSP cores, radio acceleration, and many other application specific accelerators | | | Q4 2015 | |
| Exynos 5 Dual (previously Exynos 5250) | 32 nm HKMG | 1.7 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 | ARM Mali-T604 (quad-core) @ 533 MHz; 68.224 GFLOPS | 32-bit dual-channel 800 MHz LPDDR3/DDR3 (12.8 GB/sec) or 533 MHz LPDDR2 (8.5 GB/sec) | | Q3 2012 | Samsung Chromebook XE303C12, Google Nexus 10, Arndale Board, Huins ACHRO 5250 Exynos, Freelander PD800 HD, Voyo A15, HP Chromebook 11, Samsung Homesync |
| Exynos 5 Octa (internally Exynos 5410) | 28 nm HKMG | 1.6 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 and 1.2 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 (ARM big.LITTLE) | IT PowerVR SGX544MP3 (tri-core) @ 480 MHz 49 GFLOPS (532 MHz in some full-screen apps) | 32-bit dual-channel 800 MHz LPDDR3 (12.8 GB/sec) | | Q2 2013 | Samsung Galaxy S4 I9500, Hardkernel ODROID-XU, Meizu MX3, ZTE Grand S II TD ODROID-XU |
| Exynos 5 Octa (internally Exynos 5420) | 28 nm HKMG | 1.8-1.9 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 and 1.3 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 (ARM big.LITTLE with GTS) | ARM Mali-T628 MP6 @ 533 MHz; 109 GFLOPS | 32-bit dual-channel 933 MHz LPDDR3e (14.9 GB/sec) | | Q3 2013 | Samsung Chromebook 2 11.6", Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition), Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2, Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro (12.2 & 10.1), Arndale Octa Board, Galaxy S5 SM-G900H |
| Exynos 5 Octa (internally Exynos 5422) | 28 nm HKMG | 2.1 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 and 1.5 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 (ARM big.LITTLE with GTS) | ARM Mali-T628 MP6 @ 695 MHz (142 Gflops) | 32-bit dual-channel 933 MHz LPDDR3/DDR3 (14.9 GB/sec) | | Q2 2014 | Galaxy S5 SM-G900, Hardkernel ODROID-XU3 & ODROID-XU4 |
| Exynos 5 Octa (internally Exynos 5800) | 28 nm HKMG | 2.1 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 and 1.3 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 (ARM big.LITTLE with GTS) | ARM Mali-T628 MP6 @ 695 MHz (142 Gflops) | 32-bit dual-channel 933 MHz LPDDR3/DDR3 (14.9 GB/sec) | | Q2 2014 | Samsung Chromebook 2 13,3" |
| Exynos 5 Hexa (internally Exynos 5260) | 28 nm HKMG | 1.7 GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A15 and 1.3 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 (ARM big.LITTLE with GTS) | ARM Mali-T624 | 32-bit dual-channel 800 MHz LPDDR3 (12.8 GB/sec) | | Q2 2014 | Galaxy Note 3 Neo (announced January 31, 2014), Samsung Galaxy K zoom |
| Allwinner A80 Octa | 28 nm HPm | Quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 and Quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 (ARM big.LITTLE with GTS) | PowerVR G6230 (Rogue) | 32-bit dual-channel DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR3 or LPDDR2 | | | |