After nearly a decade, British chip designer ARM is announcing its next generation of ARMv9 architecture for computer chips. The new architecture promises to bring improved security and much better processing than the last generation, ARMv8, which has been in use for a decade.
For the layman, this means better smartphone processors which will mean laptop-like performance from your handheld device in addition to being more secure to hackers and security issues.
What’s New?
The focus of the new architecture is security, machine learning, and vector processing. ARMv9 introduces the Confidential Compute Architecture, CCA, which will protect data and code from even privileged software. Version 9 will allow apps to dynamically create Realms, a safe space for any app that needs it.
This space will be so secure that even the OS will not be able to touch it. This should keep the data and code safe even if the OS is out of date and lacks security patches.
Further, ARMv9 also adds SVE2, which is the next step after last year’s Scalable Vector Extension (SVE), which was applied on the supercomputer Fugaku. This will be applied to the GPU, CPU, and NPU to allow for much better vector processing and machine learning.
What’s Special About It?
ARM is already designing the first two generations of ARMv9 based CPU cores. These two generations will be called Matterhorn and Makalu, and by the time the second generation comes out, we will see a 30% performance increase in CPU cores.
This should mean much better CPU performance in future smartphones and ARM-based computers.
As for its GPU, ARM has detailed how it’s working on Ray Tracing variable-rate shading and other advanced rendering techniques for its future Mali GPUs.
This means games will look realistic on smartphones with graphics looking closer to PC and new consoles like PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
ARMv8 powered more than 100 billion devices over the past 5 years, and now ARMv9 plans to feature on the next 300 billion ARM chips.
Stay tuned for more.
