Specifications

The Arm Cortex-A78 CPU delivers premium performance with the industry-leading power efficiency for multiple form factors.

The fourth-generation premium core built on DynamIQ technology. Paired with Cortex-A55 CPUs in a scalable DynamIQ big.LITTLE configuration, Cortex-A78 extends the performance and efficiency of premium smartphones to multiple form factors. Consumers demand premium level performance from devices, Cortex-A78 provides up to a 20% sustained performance increase, along with 50% energy savings when compared to earlier generation devices. Together with a solution-focused approach to chip design, including the GPU and NPU, Cortex-A78 provides greater efficiency for multi-day battery life across mobile, laptop, and foldable devices.

Arm Cortex-A78 Block Diagram

Arm Cortex-A78 CPU based on DynamIQ technology

Architecture Armv8-A (Harvard)  
Extensions
  • Armv8.1 extensions
  • Armv8.2 extensions
  • Cryptography extensions
  • RAS extensions
 Armv8.3 (LDAPR instructions only)
  
ISA support
  • A64
  • A32 and T32 (at EL0 only) 
  
Microarchitecture
 Pipeline Out of order
Superscalar
 Yes
Neon / Floating Point Unit Included
Cryptography Unit
 Optional
Max number of CPUs in cluster
 4
Physical Addressing (PA) 40-bit
Memory system and external interfaces
 L1 I-Cache / D-Cache 32KB to 64KB
L2 Cache 256KB to 512KB
L3 Cache Optional, 512KB to 4MB
Up to 8MB (with Cortex-X1)
ECC Support Yes
LPAE Yes
Bus interfaces            AMBA ACE or CHI
ACP Optional
Peripheral Port Optional
Functional Safety Support ASIL D systematic
Security TrustZone
Interrupts GIC interface, GICv4
Generic timer Armv8-A
PMU PMUv3
Debug Armv8-A (plus Armv8.2-A extensions)
CoreSight CoreSightv3
Embedded Trace Macrocell ETMv4.2 (instruction trace)

Arm Security Algorithm Accelerators

Download the hardware block:

Cortex-A78_Security_Algorithm_Accelerator.tar.gz 588 KB

Key features compared to Cortex-A77

Some of the key areas where Cortex-A78 improves on performance and energy efficiency of Cortex-A77. 

  • Twenty percent sustained performance improvements (assuming a 1W power budget)
  • Fifty percent energy savings at same performance, enabling multi-day battery life using latest process nodes
  • Extended scalability with extra support from the DynamIQ Shared Unit for big.LITTLE