ARM announces Cortex A57 and Cortex A53 processors, mass production expected in 2014

ARM has just upped the ante and taken the battle to Intel’s homefront with its newly announced Cortex A57 and Cortex A53 processor cores. Both processors will have 64-bit architectures unlike the current 32-bit ARM architectures. ARM says that A53 will be the world’s smallest
64-bit processor. With these new processors ARM claims immense performance and battery efficiency gains.
With the Cortex A57, ARM says that users will get thrice the performance of the current superphones using the same amount of power. It actually says performance will be comparable to a current legacy PC, which is sure to ruffle a few feathers at Intel, which is known for touting its performance advantage over ARM.
On the flipside, ARM is adopting a different approach with the A53. It claims that the A53 processor core will deliver the same performance as a current superphone but will only use up a quarter of the power used by the current superphones.
Like the Cortex 15, ARM says both cores can also be combined for what it calls the big.LITTLE configuration. In this state the weaker A53 core will handle most tasks and the more power A57 core will kick in when the extra horsepower is needed.
As always, these are just processor architecture designs for cores and companies like AMD, Broadcom, Calxeda, HiSilicon, Samsung and STMicroelectronics have signed up to make chipsets based on these designs. On the other hand, Qualcomm and Apple prefer more customized chipsets, so they are unlikely to make chips based exactly on the new design set.
ARM says Cortex A57 and Cortex A53 based chips will be available in 2014.