ARM v9 architecture will be used in Apple devices?

5 min readApr 3, 2021

Recently arm had an online event which is called vision day. Where they talk about their vision for the technology’s ecosystem. Where things are going over the next few years and as part of that it announces ready to launch arm v9. The ninth iteration of the arm architecture and we’re betting that Apple is gonna use it in their next iPhone. So if you wanna find out more please let us explain.

Some historical background of the ARM architecture

So right back to the beginning when there was the first arm chip. There was obviously a design document that described the architecture of that CPU. The instructions and how the memory was laid out, how interrupts are handled and so on. And over the years that document has been improved and things of features have been added and it’s grown. So that you had arm v1 and then on b2 and rb3 and so on.

Now, of course, we’re at arm v8 and rv8 is the standard that we use nowadays and we find it absolutely everywhere in our iPhones in android phones in the MacBook Pro! With the m1 processor in the surface pro x with the Qualcomm laptop processor. Obviously, it runs Linux it runs windows it runs mac os it runs android it runs ios huge support across the industry for this one type of chip with its instruction set architecture.

Now if you go back a few generations what the important ones that we’ve had recently were arm v6 rv6 was what you found! Actually in the very first iPhone and also what you found a lot of feature phones. Remember the ones with the buttons the nokias with snake and everything like that on it and in fact it’s even used today still in the raspberry pi zero! So if you want a raspberry pi zero only cost you five dollars. It’s actually got a full 32-bit CPU in there! It can run Linux using the arm v6 architecture.

ARM evolution

Of course, after that you got the arm v7 which was the last 32-bit architecture added other things like some additional floating-point stuff and virtualization and a way to address more than four gigabytes of memory! And then we had arm v8 which moved everything over to 64 bits now arm is ready to launch arm v9 architecture! This design that’s going to carry us forward for the next 10 years at least of arm CPUs. Now exactly what’s in arm v9 is not fully revealed but we know a few things! One is that they are pushing the idea of machine learning and to do that they’re going to take the sve 2 extensions that are the simd instructions that you find for HPC for the sort of high powered computing! And they’re bringing that down into arm v9.

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So they kind of can be using everything from a smartphone or out to a supercomputer you get access to these special vector instructions. Which are great for machine learning also great for kind of DSP stuff and bringing that down to the level. That everything can use it from a 5g kind of stuff right way up to a supercomputer and we also know they’re concentrating heavily on security. Because we’ve all had big security problems over the last few years with heartbleed and spectra and all these other kinds of bugs that have been knocking around and they in themselves and we’ve tried to address them! They’ve caused performance issues.

What will get in ARM v9;

So arm is saying well in v9 we’re going to bring in some hardware stuff that actually really helps to combat these kinds of problems. Including memory tagging something that was actually already been introduced in android 11 and also some other things! Particularly this idea of realms now realms is a new idea that arma bringing into rv9 which basically says if we want to run a piece of software we can run it in its own realm! So it can’t leak out of it at a hardware level. So not just at a software level you’re trying to be clever with how you write the software at a hardware level. It can’t kind of break out of this little container little jail. There it’s running separate so it’s kind of with extra added security to it and you can run a whole operating system there.

So you can run kind of like android in there or you can run even an app that can be kind of set up to run in its own jail in its own little realm. So that it can keep all the information in there very very secure at a hardware level and for example, if you had a medical app or a banking app that could be set up in such a way that it runs its own realm and then even if your phone has been compromised somehow! It’s very hard for that malware to get access to that data also announced that MediaTek will be shipping on v9 CPUs in 2022 actually in consumer products and at the end of 2021, they’ll be available for sampling. This means the manufacturers and so on will be able to use them for their next level of design!

ARM v9 and ARM cortex generation!

So MediaTek will be one of the first companies to have an arm v9 CPU! Now that knowledge in itself gives us some important clues about what’s happening in companies like arm itself. Also in some of its partner companies like Apple over the last few years. Sometime in the mid-spring arm has announced its new generation of cortex! A processor so we had an announcement for the cortex A73 and then you know the A77 and the A78. So now they often might announce new GPUs as well. New mali GPU…………..

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ARM v9 architecture will be used in Apple devices?

Table of contents

Some historical background of the ARM architecture

ARM evolution

What will get in ARM v9;

ARM v9 and ARM cortex generation!

Written by Digital Engineer