Specifications

The Cortex-A78AE processor combines high performance and power efficiency for safe compute in thermally-constrained designs.

Cortex-A78AE is designed for devices that undertake complex and demanding safety-critical tasks with differing workloads. Cortex-A78AE is well suited to the needs of automated driving and autonomous industrial systems.

Cortex-A78AE supports features to achieve ASIL D/SIL 3 in lock mode. Cortex-A78AE also aids achievement of ASIL B/SIL 2 in hybrid mode, allowing flexibility through its Split-Lock feature operating in second-generation Dual Core Lock-Step (DCLS). Hybrid mode enables the highest safety levels for mission-critical deployments or highest performance for lower safety applications.

Architecture Armv8.2-A (AArch32 at ELO only)  
Extensions
  • Armv8.1 extensions
  • Armv8.2 extensions
  • Armv8.3 (LDAPR instructions only)
  • RAS extensions
  • Armv8.4 Dot Product
  • Cryptography extensions
  • RAS extensions
  
Microarchitecture
 Pipeline Out of order
Superscalar
 Yes
Neon / Floating Point Unit Included with INT8 Dot Product and IEEE FP16
Cryptography Unit
 Optional
Max number of CPUs in cluster
 4
Physical Addressing (PA) 48-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
ECC Support Yes
LPAE Yes
Bus interfaces            AMBA ACE or CHI
ACP Optional
Peripheral Port Optional
Functional Safety Support ASIL D Systematic1 and ASIL D Diagnostic2
Security TrustZone
Interrupts

External GICv4
Generic timer Armv8-A
Non-intrusive debug (trace) Included
1Suitable for up to ASIL D systematic development
2Contributes towards up to ASIL D hardware diagnostic metrics
Cortex-A78AE block diagram

Key benefits

Split-Lock capability with hybrid mode provides end-to-end protection capability and enhanced flexibility to operate in three modes:

  • Split mode for performance
  • Lock mode for safety
  • Hybrid mode to offer a balance of safe compute performance

DCLS provides fault-tolerant operation in lock mode.

Key features compared to Cortex-A76AE

Cortex-A78AE provides 30% improved performance for each core at improved power efficiency, compared to Cortex-A76AE.