12-2-2025
64 bit ARM architecture -- various 64 bit cores
Most of my boards have A53 cores.
In particular, they have one or two clusters of 4 A53 cores.
Apparently the 4 core cluster is some kind of available building block.
A72
I have one board with a Rockchip RK3399. I has two A72 cores and four A53 cores
in a big/little arrangement. The A72 cores significantly outperform the A53.
I am also led to believe that one A72 core takes up as much chip real estate
as two A53 cores. The recent raspberry pi 4 has four A72 cores that run at up
to 1.5 Ghz. I read that at 1.5 Ghz, the A72 gives a DIPS score of 7080,
wheras the A53 gives a DIPS score of 3160 at 1.4 Ghz. In other words, at the
same clock rate, the A72 runs pretty much twice as fast. Of course it also
uses more power (but does it use more than two A53 cores?).
A76
The Rockchip RK3588 offers four A76 cores. The A76 gives about 35 percent
more performance than the A72 at the same clock rate.
The L1 cache on the A76 is 64K as compared to 32K on the A72.
I don't see any inexpensive boards with the RK3588.
The Banana Pi M7 has 16G and sells for $190 on Amazon.
The Orange Pi 5 has 16G and sells for $192 on Amazon.
The best deal looks like the Orange Pi 5 Pro with 4G of ram for $89 on Amazon:
Rockchip docs
I just need a place to park this link:
Feedback? Questions?
Drop me a line!
Tom's Computer Info / tom@mmto.org