ARM is currently the most widely used CPU architecture in the world.
It may not power your box, but it almost certainly powers your smartphone or tablet.
Furthermore, Apple now uses ARM architecture on their in-house CPU designs.
The reason for that is immediately clear.
ARM CPUs can have amazing performance while also managing to keep power consumption low.
So low, in fact, that they can fit inside thin smartphones with passive cooling.
Image Credit:Qualcomm
But what exactly is big.LITTLE, and why is it so important?
What Is ARM’s big.LITTLE CPU Architecture?
The way most modern CPUs work is that they usually have multiple cores that the system divides tasks between.
All tasks, big or small, are handled and distributed between these cores.
Not so with ARM big.LITTLE CPUs.
The advantage is twofold.
They also have better performance since more demanding tasks have a cluster of CPU cores all for themselves.
You’re getting a CPU that both performs better and is also more power-efficient.
The way the scheduler for these earlier big.LITTLE CPUs worked, however, was pretty clumsy.
Image Credit:Qualcomm
These earlier schedulers used “clustered switching” to address whole clusters at once.
It’s definitely one way to do it, but in retrospect, it was a fairly inefficient one.
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Then, we saw the in-kernel switcher.
From there, we ended up with heterogeneous multi-processing.
Here, each core can be addressed individually.
How Has big.LITTLE Changed the CPU Landscape?
ARM processors already had a good reputation for providing a decent balance between performance and power efficiency.
However, on these CPUs, a low power draw is essential.
big.LITTLE, though, was huge because it was able to improve both performance and power efficiency simultaneously.
The advantages are simply too huge to deny.
What Is DynamIQ?
In addition, DynamIQ provides more precise per-core voltage regulation and better L2 cache speeds.
An example of a DynamIQ processor is the Snapdragon 888, Qualcomm’s flagship chip for the year 2021.
In big.LITTLE processors, it is common to see clusters of big and small cores.
Finally, the power-efficient cores are four Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 1.8 GHz.
It’s an octa-core setup, but it uses three different core designs meant to tackle different tasks.
We’re really excited about the future of ARM processors going forward.
