ARM Cortex-A53


The ARM Cortex-A53 is one of the first two microarchitectures implementing the ARMv8-A 64-bit instruction set designed by ARM Holdings' Cambridge design centre. The Cortex-A53 is a 2-wide decode superscalar processor, capable of dual-issuing some instructions. It was announced October 30th, 2012 and is marketed by ARM as either a stand-alone, more energy-efficient alternative to the more powerful Cortex-A57 microarchitecture, or to be used alongside a more powerful microarchitecture in a big.LITTLE configuration. It is available as an IP core to licensees, like other ARM intellectual property and processor designs.

Overview

The ARM Cortex-A53 processor has been used in the LeMaker HiKey since 2015 and Raspberry Pi 3 since February 2016.
The Cortex-A53 is also used in a number of Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs. Semi-custom derivatives of the Cortex-A53 have been used in the Kryo 250 and Kryo 260 CPUs.
The Cortex-A53 is the most widely used architecture for mobile SoCs since 2014 to the present day, making it one of the longest-running ARM processors for mobile devices. It is currently featured in most entry-level and lower mid-range SoCs, while higher-end SoCs used the newer ARM Cortex-A55.
The processor is used in the ODROID-C2 and in Roku streaming media players. Another notable Cortex-A53 application is the Pine A64/A64+ single-board computer.
These cores are used in a 24-core SoC, the Socionext SynQuacer SC2A11.
The processor is used in Amazon Fire tablets, including the Fire HD 8 and the Fire HD 10 as well as the Nintendo Switch.