Category: ARM

Greg Yeric Keynote, ARM Research Group: Moore’s Law: Where are we and which way are we going?

Posted by – October 26, 2016

The doubling of transistor density every 18 months has been an exponential greater than any experienced in the human endeavor. But, as we know, the pace is slowing, creating uncertainty for the industry but also opportunity. Yeric will explore innovation from the transistor to the system level, and he sees the opportunity to not only continue effective transistor scaling, but to create exciting new products along the way.

ARM architect: Steve Furber

Posted by – August 22, 2016
Category: Exclusive videos, ARM

Architect on the first ARM Processor at Acorn Computers in Cambridge in the early 1980s, Steve Furber together with Sophie Wilson (3-parts interview: part1, part2, part3), were leading the advanced R&D team at Acorn Computers. Together they invented and designed the World’s first ARM Processor, a design that later influenced the designs used for tens of Billions of ARM processors shipped around the world. Now the ARM licencees are shipping ARM Processors at a rate of about 15 Billion processors per year. Today, Steve Furber is a professor of computer engineering at the Manchester University, leading the SpiNNaker project, a massively-parallel computer architecture trying to simulate large-scale neural networks in real-time, as a research tool for neuroscientists, computer scientists and roboticists, trying to understand the human brain’s functionality.

ARM CEO Simon Segars about SoftBank acquisition

Posted by – July 18, 2016
Category: Exclusive videos, ARM

Official video released at https://www.acceleratingtech.com/ a site to explain the SoftBank acquisition of ARM, they claim:
– SoftBank’s £17 offer price gives ARM shareholders a 43% premium on Friday’s closing share price and a 41.1% premium on the all-time high share price
– Assurance to double ARM’s UK headcount in the next five years and increase headcount outside the UK
– Leaves ARM’s successful partnership business model, culture and brand unchanged
– Great endorsement of UK tech

Japanese Press Conference: ARM to be acquired by SoftBank

Posted by – July 18, 2016
Category: Exclusive videos, ARM

Here’s the official Japanese Press Conference (with English real-time voice-over translation) with SoftBank CEO and Founder Masayoshi Son announcing the acquisition of ARM by SoftBank. The presentation and the questions in the Q&A are a bit more extensive compared to the English Press Conference posted here

Press Conference: ARM to be acquired by SoftBank

Posted by – July 18, 2016
Category: Exclusive videos, ARM

SoftBank CEO and Founder Masayoshi Son of Japan speaks at the SoftBank Press Conference to announce the acquisition of ARM Holdings for $31.4 Billion, SoftBank promises to keep the same business model of licencing for ARM, to increase the employee count in the UK by 2x within the next 5 years, to increase ARM’s employee count around the world. You can read the official presentation materials here

Brexit: ARM sells off to Japanese SoftBank, $31B acquisition reported on NYT/FT/TheRegister

Posted by – July 18, 2016

Japanese SoftBank Telecom company agreed to acquire ARM for $31.4 Billion, announced today. That’s what NYT, FT, Reuters, TheRegister have said.

The new UK Government of Theresa May seems to be happy about it.

This is Brexit (2)

UK’s best Technology company, Europe’s best Technology company, to be taken over by a Japanese Telecom company. What does this mean for the future of Processors? What does this mean for the future of R&D, innovation, what does it mean for the future of the Tech industry? This is huge. Who is SoftBank? What does SoftBank’s CEO and Founder Masayoshi Son want to do with the future of Technology?

SoftBank has previously acquired Alderaban Robotics, they want to have Humanoid Robots everywhere. Ex-Googler Nikesh Aurora was president of SoftBank (and upcomong CEO) until 3 weeks ago, because SoftBank CEO and founder Masayoshi Son decided to stay CEO for another 5-10 years after his upcoming 60th anniversary.

SoftBank got its money from being successful Japanese Telecom carrier, and also by investing $20 Million in Alibaba in 2000, now worth $61 Billion, and having recently sold a lot of its Alibaba shares, this means SoftBank has a lot of cash to spend.

Who is SoftBank CEO and founder Masayoshi Son? What is his plan for the future of Technology? What does he plan to do with ARM? Is this really happening?

$20 Red Bear BLE Nano development board uses ARM mbed and Device Cloud Connector


At the ARM booth at Computex 2016, Shenzhen based Red Bear presents their $20 BLE Nano development board, the world’s smallest Bluetooth Low Energy development board using a Nordic Semiconductor nRF51822 16Mhz ARM Cortex-M0 SoC with 32KB RAM, 256KB Flash that supports BLE Central and BLE Peripheral roles, supports voltage from 1.8V to 3.3V and that work’s with their free Android or iOS app. ARM IoT Business Unit Marketing Engineer Neil Tan also shows his project to make a Strength Enhancing Exoskeleton developed with ARM mbed on an STM32F401 ARM Cortex-M4 based development board. Filmed in 4K using Sony AX53

ARM Press Conference at Computex 2016 (in 4K), Launching ARM Cortex-A73 and ARM Mali-G71

Posted by – May 31, 2016

ARM Computex Taipei 2016 pre-show press and analyst conference with EVP & Chief Commercial Officer, Rene Hass and VP Marketing and Strategy of CPU Group, Nandan Nayampally launch ARM Cortex-A73 and ARM Mali-G71. This video also includes the Q&A towards the end of the video. You can also watch my Interview with Nandan Nyampally here.

ARM Cortex-A73, ARM Mali-G71

Posted by – May 30, 2016

ARM Cortex-A73 is the fastest ARM processor yet (30% faster than ARM Cortex-A72), ARM Mali-G71 is the fastest ARM GPU ever (50% faster than ARM Mali-T880). Sampling on 10nm before the end of this year, to be in flagship devices from early next year.

ARM Cortex-A73 enables more efficiency and performance for Mobile SoCs, at under 0.65mm2 per core (on 10nm FinFET process) the ARM Cortex-A73 is the smallest and most efficient ‘big’ ARMv8-A core. 30% faster, 30% more power efficient compared with ARM Cortex-A72. Size and efficiency improvements enhance the ability of silicon providers to use the Cortex-A73 in ARM big.LITTLE configurations. These improvements create further opportunities for designers to scale big cores along with the GPU and other IP in a single SoC. Ten partners have licensed ARM Cortex-A73 so far, including HiSilicon, Marvell and Mediatek. In addition to smartphones, ARM’s latest premium IP suite offers the increased performance density and throughput required for other consumer electronics applications such as large-screen compute devices, industrial gateways, in vehicle infotainment and smart TVs.

ARM Mali-G71 GPU enables 50% better graphics performance (compared with Mali-T880), 20% better power-efficiency, 40% more performance per mm2. The Mali-G71 scales efficiently up to 32 shader cores, twice as many as the Mali-T880. The uplift means the Mali-G71 surpasses the performance of many discrete GPUs found in today’s mid-range laptops. The product is also fully coherent, helping to simplify software development and efficiency. To power immersive VR and AR experiences on mobile devices and leading silicon providers including HiSilicon, MediaTek and Samsung Electronics have already taken licenses. Bifrost, the third-generation ARM GPU architecture, is the foundation of the Mali-G71. The architecture is optimized for Vulkan and other industry-standard APIs, building on innovations from the previous Utgard and Midgard architectures.

MWC 2016 Keynote: ARM CEO Simon Segars

Posted by – March 2, 2016

Simon Segars, CEO of ARM Holdings, gives a keynote speech at Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona. Talking about security for the Internet of Things, how ARM is working towards bringing solutions for the market to be mindful of cyber crime, implementing robust security for the IoT to really take off.

You can also watch the official video of this keynote here: http://www.mobileworldlive.com/mwc16-videos/mwc16-keynote-arm/

ARM Cortex-A32

Posted by – February 24, 2016

ARM Cortex-A32 is the most power efficient 32bit processor, 25% more efficient than ARM Cortex-A7 (performance per mW) in the same process node. ARM Cortex-A32 takes advantage of the ARMv8-A instruction set, it is designed to be the smallest, lowest-power 32bit processor to bring efficiency and architectural improvements to next generation rich embedded 32bit applications, to drive innovation across diverse embedded markets including wearables, consumer, industrial, and IoT. You can read more about it at: https://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a32-processor.php

ARM Cortex-R8

Posted by – February 23, 2016

ARM announces ARM Cortex-R8, twice the performance of ARM Cortex-R7. This means we are going to get faster modems for 5G, faster hard drives and many other things that require a faster realtime processor. You can read more about ARM Cortex-R8 here: https://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-r/cortex-r8-processor.php

ARM mbed IoT device platform

Posted by – February 17, 2016

ARM mbed OS is an open source embedded operating system for IoT for ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers that can be used to power smart cities, smart homes and wearables. mbed OS accelerates the time to market by providing a core operating system, robust security foundations, standards based communication capabilities, and drivers for sensors, I/O devices and connectivity. mbed OS is built as a modular, configurable software stack to readily customize it to devices being developed for, and reduce memory requirements by excluding unnecessary software components. mbed OS forms the client-side portion of the mbed IoT Device Platform on microcontrollers, and is designed to work in concert with mbed Device Connector, mbed Device Server, and mbed Client. Together this platform delivers comprehensive IoT solutions.

Richard York, VP Embedded Marketing at ARM

Posted by – February 17, 2016

Richard York is responsible for the embedded segment marketing at ARM which covers markets including automotive, microcontrollers, HDD/SSD and smart analogue.

ARM mbed Smartwatch reference design with 2 months battery life


ARM shows their open source hardware and software Smartwatch reference design with 2 months battery life runs mbed OS on a Silicon Labs EFM32 Giant Gecko ARM Cortex-M3 SoC and memory LCD, it also have an ARM Cortex-M0 for Bluetooth and an ARM Cortex-M4 for the fingerprint sensor. GPS, NFC, 9-axis sensor (accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer), ambient light sensor, capacitive sliders for UI scrolling, buttons and more are on the flexible PCB. The power consumption is around 70microAmps with the animation running on the memory LCD, the battery life should be about 2 month on a compact and light 160mAh battery. ARM is building open source experimental smart wearables to explore the potential of ARM in wearables and IoT, to encourage device makers to use all the latest ARM technologies in combination with innovative display technologies and sensors to to create better concepts, to better use technologies to try to contribute to and improve the internet of things and the wearables market. Some goals for better Wearables can be to last months on a battery, to connect and interact with all devices seamlessly, to enable new forms of trusted interactions and ultimately aim to fade in to the background. These advances are to be integrated into ARM’s open source mbed OS, there might be subsets of mbed OS, less is needed on the Bluetooth chip for example than on the microcontroller of the Smartwatch or other IoT device.

Developing this mbed OS Smartwatch reference design gives ARM the opportunity to get first-hand experience of the realities of building complete and complex physical products – the mechanical design, electronics, software and taking it all through the production process. ARM has taken a complete design from concept through to manufacturing a few hundred working units thus far, and learned a huge amount. This may inspire and encourage device makers to advance and innovate faster to make the Smartwatch market a success.

BBC micro:bit on ARM’s 25 year birthday


1 million 11 year olds in the UK will receive the BBC microbit when they come back to school after the Christmas holiday in January 2016, they can use it to get started with programming and hacking with hardware. BBC micro:bit runs on Nordic Semiconductor nRF51822 16MHz 32bit ARM Cortex-M0 microcontroller, Freescale Kinetis KL26Z – 48 MHz ARM Cortex-M0+ core, that includes a full-speed USB 2.0 On-The-Go (OTG) controller, used as a communication interface between USB and main Nordic microcontroller, Freescale MMA8652 3-axis accelerometer sensor,
Freescale MAG3110 3-axis magnetometer sensor to act as a compass and metal detector, 25 LED lights in a 5×5 array and Bluetooth technology, it is given for free to every child in year 7 or equivalent across the UK. You can read more about BBC micro:bit here.

ARM Cortex-A35

Posted by – November 13, 2015

ARM announces that 50% of the Smartphones sold in 2015 are 64bit already. This is a phenomenal success for ARM’s 64bit deployment. At ARM TechCon 2015, ARM announces ARM Cortex-A35, an upgrade for ARM Cortex-A7 which is currently the most popular ARM Cortex-A core shipping in most of the current low-end to mid-range Smartphones, at 10% lower power consumption, ARM Cortex-A35 brings up to 40% higher performance compared to ARM Cortex-A7! This will bring 64bit to even more Smartphones for the entry-level to mid-range markets starting before the end of 2016. ARM Mali-470 is a good power efficient GPU to use with ARM Cortex-A35, and it can be used in big.LITTLE configurations together with ARM Cortex-A72, ARM Cortex-A57 or ARM Cortex-A53.

James McNiven, General Manager, ARM CPU Group

Posted by – November 13, 2015

James McNiven talks about running ARM’s CPU team, managing the engineering, the marketing and operations to deliver the ARM CPUs to ARM’s partners around the world.

ARM IoT Security Strategy in ARMv8-M

Posted by – November 12, 2015

Milosch Meriac, ARM IoT Security Engineer, talks about the strategy ARM is working on to make Internet of Things secure. ARM is convinced that many IoT security problems can be solved with standardised building blocks. ARM is developing the uVisor, a self-contained software hypervisor that creates independent secure domains on ARM Cortex-M3 and M4 microcontrollers (M0+ will follow). Its function is to increase resilience against malware and to protect secrets from leaking even among different modules of the same application. The uVisor is one of these basic building blocks – complementary to other important blocks like robust communication stacks, safe firmware updates and secure crypto libraries. The design philosophy of uVisor is to provide hardware-enforced compartments (sandboxes) for individual code blocks by limiting access to memories and peripherals using the existing hardware security features of the Cortex-M microcontrollers. Breaking the established flat security model of microcontrollers into compartmentalised building blocks results in high security levels, as the reach of flaws or external attacks can be limited to less sensitive function blocks. A basic example of uVisor is preventing unauthorised access to flash memory from faulty or compromised code. This not only prevents malware from getting resident on the device, but also enables protection of device secrets like cryptographic keys. Services built on top of ARM’s security layer can safely depend on an unclonable trusted identity, secure access to internet services and benefit from encryption key protection.

https://github.com/ARMmbed/uvisor (uVisor documentation and sources)
https://github.com/ARMmbed/uvisor-lib/blob/master/DOCUMENTATION.md (API docs)
https://github.com/ARMmbed/uvisor-lib (integration in ARMmbed)

Slideshow Milosch Meriac presented at ARM TechCon: Resilient IoT Security The end of flat security models

ARM Mali-470

Posted by – November 12, 2015

ARM Mali-470 is the newest Mali-400 family GPU by ARM, it is the most energy efficient GPU from ARM, it supports the latest Android versions, optimized to extend battery life for wearables and Android Wear.