CortexA7

The ARM Cortex-A7 is a 32-bit ARMv7-A central processing unit core designed by ARM Holdings to provide high efficiency for mobile devices. It was developed as a compact, energy-conscious companion to the Cortex-A15, and is commonly used in big.LITTLE configurations where a higher-power core handles peak performance and the A7 handles everyday tasks to save power. It supports the ARMv7-A instruction set, including Thumb-2, and is intended for deployment in multi-core System on Chips (SoCs) across a range of process technologies.

Architecturally, the Cortex-A7 is an in-order, dual-issue (two-way) superscalar core with a relatively small and efficient design aimed at low power consumption. It includes the typical ARMv7-A features such as support for ARM’s optional floating-point and SIMD extensions (VFP/NEON) and TrustZone security; virtualization features present in ARMv7-A are supported as implemented by the SoC vendor. Cache configurations are commonly 32 KB instruction cache and 32 KB data cache per core, with larger L2 caches provided by the SoC as needed. The core is designed to scale in multi-core configurations and is used both in standalone multi-core deployments and in heterogenous big.LITTLE clusters with Cortex-A15 or other cores.

Impact and usage: The Cortex-A7 is valued for its balance of performance and power efficiency, enabling higher core counts in mobile devices without excessive energy use. It has been widely adopted in smartphones and other mobile devices, often in devices that require long battery life and compact die size. Its presence in many SoCs has helped enable mid-range and some cost-sensitive devices to achieve competitive performance with improved efficiency.

See also: Cortex-A15, big.LITTLE, ARMv7-A.