Recently, ARM has announced a new series of Cortex processor cores, the ARM Cortex-A72. ARM has stated that the A72 will enable nominal CPU frequencies of as high as 2.5GHz, and will have an integrated Mali-T880 GPU. They will also be optimizing it for 16-nm FinFET die manufacturing.

The core designs will be licensed to chipset companies for implementation. ARM is targeting 2016 for shipment of the developed products with the A72s in use.

The relatively new (but strong) player, MediaTek, uses the ARM Cortex cores along with their integrated GPUs. The GPU upgrade in the A72 is very good news for them, as it will certainly take graphics rendering to a whole new level.