New year, new processor building kit from ARM: The company has unveiled its new fastest CPU standard core, the C2-Ultra, which partners like Mediatek and Samsung can integrate into their mobile processors. ARM promises 15 percent more performance but reaches into the bag of tricks: this value only applies together with increasing clock frequencies. There are greater innovations in the Mali G2-Ultra NX graphics unit.
The name Lumex is already history again. ARM introduced it in 2025 as the successor to Cortex; now the company is completely omitting such names.
Moderate CPU optimizations
The C2-Ultra achieves around seven percent more computational work per clock cycle (Instructions per Clock, IPC) than the C1-Ultra. ARM cites general improvements in branch prediction and the utilization of the compute units for this.
For the 15 percent overall increase, ARM envisages a clock speed jump from 4.1 to 4.45 GHz. This is made possible by a more modern manufacturing process: all C2 cores are designed for the 2-nanometer process N2P from chip contract manufacturer TSMC. For the C1 generation, it was still N3P.
