ARM Cortex-A53
The ARM Cortex-A53 is one of the first two central [processing unit]s implementing the ARMv8-A 64-bit instruction set designed by ARM Holdings' Cambridge design centre, along with the Cortex-A57. The Cortex-A53 is a two-wide in-order superscalar processor, capable of dual-issuing some instructions. It was announced October 30, 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 Semiconductor [intellectual property core|IP core] to licensees, like other ARM intellectual property and processor designs.
Overview
- 8-stage pipelined processor with 2-way superscalar, in-order execution pipeline
- DSP and NEON SIMD extensions are mandatory per core
- VFPv4 Floating Point Unit onboard
- Hardware virtualization support
- TrustZone security extensions
- 64-byte cache lines
- 10-entry L1 TLB, and 512-entry L2 TLB
- 4KiB conditional branch predictor, 256-entry indirect branch predictor
Utilization
The Cortex-A53 is the most widely used platform for mobile SoCs since 2014 to 2025, making it one of the longest-running ARM platform 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 latest SoC still using the Cortex-A53 is the MediaTek Helio G50, which is an entry-level SoC designed for budget smartphones.The ARM Cortex-A53 processor has been used in the LeMaker HiKey since 2015, the Raspberry Pi 3 since February 2016, and the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W since October 2021.
The Cortex-A53 is also used in a number of Qualcomm, Samsung, and MediaTek SoCs. Semi-custom derivatives of the Cortex-A53 have been used in Qualcomm's Kryo 250 and Kryo 260 CPUs. The Starlink ground terminals utilize a quad-core Cortex-A53 SoC from STMicroelectronics as a main control unit.
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. It is also used in some Amazon Echo Show models such as the Echo Show 5, Echo Show 8, and Echo Show 5.
The processor is used in Fortinet's Fortigate 81F entry-level firewalls.
Automotive electronic control units utilize A53 cores for vehicle network processing and high-performance real-time computations.