CortexA15

The ARM Cortex‑A15 is a high‑performance, multi‑core processor core designed by ARM Holdings. It was released in 2012 and is based on the ARMv7‑A architecture. The core is a 32‑bit design that supports full virtual memory and paging, providing a large instruction set of up to 15,000 instructions. It features a 7‑stage pipeline with superscalar execution and an out‑of‑order execution engine that can retire more than 4 instructions per cycle under optimal conditions. The Cortex‑A15 supports SIMD extensions through ARM’s Advanced SIMD (NEON) instruction set, and it implements the ARM TrustZone technology for secure execution environments.

Manufacturers commonly use the Cortex‑A15 in dual or quad‑core configurations, targeting mid‑to‑high‑end mobile, tablet, and embedded devices. It can be fabricated with process nodes ranging from 32 nm to 28 nm, and the design includes advanced power‑management features such as dynamic voltage and frequency scaling. The core also supports flexible cache hierarchies; typical implementations use up to 1 MB of L2 cache per core and a shared L3 cache for the entire cluster. In terms of performance, the Cortex‑A15 offers up to 3 GHz clock speeds in many production systems and is often paired with ARM Mali or Vivante GPU units in System‑on‑Chip (SoC) designs.

Because of its balance between performance, power consumption, and silicon area, the Cortex‑A15 has found widespread deployment in devices from Android smartphones to industrial controllers. While newer ARM cores (such as the Cortex‑A55 and A76) have taken over many high‑end roles, the Cortex‑A15 remains in use in many legacy and low‑budget platforms due to its mature architecture and extensive software support.