The independent Advanced SIMD disables permit Cortex-A9 implementations with Cortex-A9 NEON MPE to behave as though only the VFP extension were present. This lets you enable optimal operating-system task scheduling between Cortex-A9 multi-processor clusters containing both Cortex-A9 NEON MPE and floating-point only units.

The Cortex-A9 processor provides support for preventing use of this feature through Non-secure access. See Non-secure Access Control Register and Coprocessor Access Control Register.