ARM says next-generation A72 chip can triple the performance of today's chips, or match performance while using 75% less power
Phones will be WAY faster, with DOUBLE battery life Noel Randewich / Reuters : ARM Holdings unveils beefed-up smartphone chip design Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica : ARM wants to double its CPU speed with the new Cortex A72 Ian KingAmy Thomson / Bloomberg Business : ARM Unveils Faster Design to Keep Smartphone Market Rolling Chris Williams / The Register : Watt the...? ARM emits most powerful 64-bit Cortex for mobes, slabs Jeffrey Burt / eWeek : ARM Unveils New Chip for Smartphones in 2016 Jane McEntegart / MobileSyrup.com : ARM's new 64-bit processor supports 4K capture at 120fps Rob Triggs / Android Authority : ARM announces 16nm Cortex-A72 CPU and Mali-T880 GPU Ben Fox Rubin / CNET : Here's how souped-up your smartphone will be in 2016 Rachel King / ZDNet : ARM unveils new chips for ‘console-like’ mobile gaming, faster work apps
Context & Ripple Effects
ARM's Cortex-A72 announcement, paired with the Mali-T880 GPU, set the template its own roadmap has followed every year since: a flagship CPU-GPU pairing pitched on either raw speed or big efficiency gains, with chips reaching phones roughly a year and a half after unveiling. Two years later the Cortex-A75 arrived claiming 22% better performance, then the A76 pushed VR- and AI-focused efficiency in 2018.
What started as an occasional design refresh has hardened into a metronome — A77 in 2019, A78 in 2020, Cortex-X2 by 2021 — making ARM's spring unveil the fixed point around which Android flagship silicon planning rotates.
First-order effects
- Smartphone makers designing 2016 flagships around licensed ARM cores get a choice the spec sheet makes explicit: triple the performance of current designs or equal performance at 75% less power, which lands directly on the two axes — speed and battery life — that sell phones.
- The bundled Mali-T880 GPU gives ARM's partners a matched CPU-plus-graphics package, including 4K capture support, rather than mixing cores and GPUs from separate roadmaps.
Second-order effects
- Every rival mobile silicon vendor now has to answer a published 3x-or-75%-less-power benchmark, forcing their next-generation parts to be measured against ARM's numbers rather than last year's generation-overgeneration deltas.
- Because the efficiency option doubles usable battery life at constant performance, handset makers gain headroom to chase thinner devices or bigger displays without sacrificing runtime — shifting competitive pressure toward display and industrial-design differentiation.
Third-order effects
- The annual cadence visible in this coverage — A72 through A75, A76, A77, A78, and X2 — has institutionalized a yearly performance-per-watt refresh cycle for mobile silicon, with each generation's claimed gains (22%, 35%, 30%) compounding into a structural gap against anyone not shipping on ARM's rhythm.
- As the pitch evolved from pure speed to efficiency-first designs tuned for machine learning and VR workloads, the flagship mobile chip became the proving ground for architectures that later migrate into other device classes like Chromebooks and tablets.
The trend: Mobile silicon has consolidated around ARM's annual flagship-refresh rhythm, where each Cortex generation's efficiency claims — not just peak speed — define the competitive baseline for smartphones.