ARM Cortex-A * Series Processors

With low power consumption, the ARM architecture got popular and 37 billion ARM processors have been produced as of 2013, up from 10 billion in 2008. The ARM architecture (32-bit) is the most widely used architecture in mobile devices, and most popular 32-bit one in embedded systems. The recently introduced ARMv8-A architecture add support for a 64-bit address space and 64-bit arithmetic. Apple first implemented the ARMv8-A architecture in the Apple A7 chip in the iPhone 5S in 2013. The ARM Cortex-A series processors are one branch of the ARM family which are designed for running operating systems, predominantly on mobile internet devices. They are used in a large variety of smart phones, notebooks, tablets, eBook readers, smart television sets, and digital set top boxes for digital televisions. They are also used in some network controllers, printers, and servers. The various processors of the Cortex-A* series and their applications are as follows (Table 1)