Samsung + Intrinsity announced 1 GHz Hummingbird Processor

Remember the Snapdragon 1 Ghz processor from Qualcomm inside the Toshiba TG01? so What's now? Not to be left behind, Samsung announces new ARM processor, the Hummingbird. Samsung and Intrinsity have jointly announced the industry’s fastest mobile processor core implementation of the dual-issue ARM Cortex-A8 processor architecture in 45 nanometer (nm) Low Power (LP), low leakage process technology. This Cortex-A8 implementation, code-named Hummingbird, delivers 2000DMIPS at 1GHz.

The Hummingbird comes with 32KB each of data and instruction caches, an L2 cache, the size of which can be customized, and an ARM NEON multi-media extension. Performance and power consumption of the Hummingbird have been validated in silicon. Samsung is currently developing standard mobile SoC products using this new core.

To achieve a 1GHz operating clock speed in 45nm LP process, the Hummingbird utilizes a semi-custom design flow which involves custom designed circuit/memory structures, a set of customized primitive cells, and the enhanced RTL FastCore® and Fast14® high-speed domino logic from Intrinsity in its implementation. A multi-Vdd / multi-frequency design methodology was also used to ensure the Hummingbird can run at a high speed even at the minimum supply voltage of 1.0V. The low power consumption and the high operating clock performance make the Hummingbird an ideal processor core for use in advanced mobile devices.