1. No idea. May have to do with power consumption.
2. It's not only cache but also other stuff within the cluster, PLLs, interfaces, etc.
3. There is a base amount of power which goes into the RoS and memory, remember these are SoC load numbers not just merely CPU core power figures. When you take away that base amount the scaling with threads is pretty linear on the A57 cores. I was also told that power consumption on the A15's was not linear because the cluster might be fighting for resources and each additional thread would decrease the actual work done per thread, making each additional thread use less power than the previous. The deltas from n to n+1 threads was 879, 708 and 637 mW. The same thing happened on the A7 cores.
Fixed the LP mention.