For years, the performance of Android smartphones has significantly improved, however, they have often been perceived as secondary to iPhones. Despite the narrowing performance gap, one has to think about when Android phones will be head-on in comparison with iPhones. Turns out it could be as early as 2025 as semiconductor IP company Arm is working on a new Cortex-X series CPU that can over-power its competition.
Codenamed Blackhawk, the next-gen Arm Cortex-X CPU, potentially to be named Cortex-X5, will become the most powerful smartphone CPU out there. The information comes from analyst firm Moor Insights and Strategy which points out how Arm CEO’s strategy to eliminate the performance between custom and pre-packaged IP chips, could change the performance paradigm.
The report further adds this could be the largest year-over-year IPC performance in just five years. Chip Design Arm is using Geekbench as a pivotal benchmarking mechanism to deduce the performance gains. Cortex-X1 GPU released in 2020 brought a significant leap in performance as well which goes to show how far X5 will be.
The CPU is likely to be great on large language model (LLM) performance given the developer’s preference for using CPU for AI features. Both NPU and GPU can handle AI processing, however, CPU takes the lead and with a Cortex-X5 in the works, this should give a significant boost to generative AI features as well.
What Does This Mean For You?
The question is, what does it mean for the people, right? Have you used the original Samsung Galaxy and the OG iPhone? Both had minute diffraction in terms of performance, however, its magnitude increased as we progressed.
Today, both custom-made Arm CPU cores on Bionic and Pro-branded chips and the pre-packaged IP chips stand poles apart in terms of performance. Since most Android devices use pre-packaged IPC, you can easily see how performance-deficient these devices can be when compared to Bionic and Pro chips.
With the upcoming Cortex-X5 cores in the works codenamed Blackhawk, you can expect the cores to punch upwards, shrinking the performance gap between these types of cores. Moreover, Cortex-X5 cores will bring better battery life which is a win-win for all.
However, it remains to be seen exactly how Cortex-X5 performs. The core is expected to be released by the end of this year and we shall see it on shelves in mid-2025 at the earliest. Smartphone makers are already playing around cores to get the best performance such as how MediaTek did by dropping little cores in favor of medium and big cores.
