Technology for the future is always on our minds and we can now get a sneak peak into the processor life, today we are talking about the new ARM Cortex-A7 processor (big.LITTLE), which is the smartphone future.

ARM’s brand new Cortex-A7 processor, does not sound that interesting at first but most products never do, smartphones are super fast when it comes to processor power and the new Cortex-A7 built using a 28nm process makes this processor 5-times smaller and much more efficient than the current offering, which is the Cortex-A8.

Not only is the above very interesting indeed, it will be that cheap that it can afford to power sub-$100 smartphones.

The new A7 chip according to sources “can be combined with much higher-power cores like the Cortex-A15 side-by-side on the same chip.”

This could mean that a smartphone or tablet device would be able to switch between two separate processor units dependant on how much power is needed at one time. If you notice above you will see we have mentioned “Big.LITTLE”, this is what ARM is calling it and this is already a concept similar to NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 (aka Kal-El) SoC.

We say this is what is needed for the smartphone future, and we say this because it could mean better battery life, which we know, is a major problem these days on high-end smartphones.

ARM mentions that one single Cortex A7 core will measure at around 0.5mm2 on a 28nm process. For more information please read the full article over on AnandTech.