Category: ARM TechCon

Chris Turner, Acorn first employee, ARM Marketing Director, CPU Group and Advanced Technologies

Posted by – April 11, 2017

ARM is now 26 years old, this is my interview with Chris Turner, he was the first employee at Acorn Computers, who created the Acorn Archimedes, the BBC Micro and worked together with inventor and designer of the first ARM Processor Sophie Wilson who I interviewed here 1of3, 2of3, 3of3 and Steve Furber who I interviewed here and the co-founder CEO of Acorn Hermann Hauser who I interviewed here.

Micro:bit CTO and CEO interview

Posted by – February 10, 2017

Johnny Austin is the CTO of the micro:bit foundation, they have distributed about 1 million units for free to every school kid age 12 in the UK, who use them to learn programming. The retail price is £13 in the UK. Micro:bit Foundation has announced three new Founding partners to join the current six. The British Council, Amazon and Lancaster University will be joining the BBC, Nominet, ARM, IET, Microsoft and Samsung. Zach Shelby is the CEO and he talks about how they are working to make the micro:bit available worldwide to everyone who wants to use it. The micro:bit is now available in 32 countries, with resellers in eleven. The micro:bit Foundation with element 14, the distributor of the BBC micro:bit, announced resellers in six new countries. This means educational organisations, teachers, kids, parents and makers will now also be able to locally purchase the BBC micro:bit in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Netherlands and Finland.

360 video: ARM Techcon 2016 (part1)

Posted by – December 23, 2016

For best result, watch this video on you VR Headset, either cheap Google Cardboard with your phone or your all in one VR headset! This 360 video is the part1 filmed at the ARM Techcon 2016 tradeshow.

Filmed using the Shuoying 1080p dual-lens Panoview camera, see my Interviews and my Factory Tour at the Shuoying category here.

$40 Ubuntu 4K on AmLogic S905 ODROID-C2 development board by HardKernel from South Korea

Posted by – December 15, 2016

The HardKernal ODroid-C2 is a board that outputs native 4K resolution over HDMI 2.0. It uses 4x ARM Cortex-A53 cores at 1.5GHz (Mali-450 GPU) coupled with 2GB DDR3 RAM. Upto 128GB eMMC HS400 and 200GB UHS-1 microSD cards are supported simultaneously. A Gigabit Ethernet port as well as 4USB Host and 1 USB OTG ports are present. The demo setup consists of a 4K TV playing 4K videos while using Ubuntu OS with MATE desktop environment. The board costs US$41.95 without the recommended eMMC memory.

NXP S32V vision processor for self-driving cars

Posted by – December 15, 2016

An application engineer from NXP demonstrates here their S32V234 automotive-grade image recognition processor that is meant to be used in autonomous self-driving vehicle applications. The board uses 4 Cortex-A53 cores , and an “Apex” signal processor that allows the image to be split into parts and processed on with algorithms in addition to an ISP for filtering. The demonstration is a camera feed processed to show object tracking, with relative motion speed and direction indicated. The board is also meant to recognize traffic signals , and supports 4 cameras with specific framerates for 360° vision processing.

MultiTech LoRaWAN IoT for agriculture

Posted by – December 14, 2016

MultiTech is an IoT company that has on display here their solutions for smart agriculture. The setup uses LoRaWAN for data transmissions (frequencies range from 700MHz in China to 915MHz in Europe) with a conduit that contains the gateway. The conduit can be IP67 water and dust proof certified in order to be installed on a rooftop. The 15km range is valid for line-of-sight only. Battery life can vary depending on the amount of data transmitted, with a one-day transmission device lasting for as long as 15 years.The demo setup consists of a sensor submerged in the ground to detect water, with data transmitted to the conduit/gateway.

Jem Davies, ARM VP of Technology, Imaging and Vision Group

Posted by – November 26, 2016

Interview with Jem Davies at ARM Techcon 2016, after his keynote (see here) he talks about the upcoming development at ARM in the field of Computer Vision, after the acquisition by ARM of Apical, adding their ISP technology, local tone-mapping Display Engine to fit inside Mali’s Display Processor, and the Computer Vision does object recognition in a fixed function dedicated engine. The Computer Vision engine is configurable to recognize people, objects, places, enabling a new visual level of smart technology.

You can also see the official video of his keynote here:

Official video of Greg Yeric’s keynote at ARM Techcon 2016

Posted by – November 26, 2016
Category: ARM TechCon, ARM

Watch here below Greg Yreic’s Keynote full video titled: Moore’s Law: Where are we and which way are we going? | ARM TechCon 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 our 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.

About the speaker: Greg Yeric began his career at Motorola’s Advanced Products Research and Development Laboratories in the area of semiconductor process integration, subsequently working at TestChip Technologies, HPL Technologies, and Synopsys, in the areas of test structures, technology development, and yield analysis. For the last 8 years, Dr. Yeric has been with ARM Holdings in Austin, Texas, where he leads the Future Silicon Technology group within ARM Research. His group’s activities include novel technology incubation, design technology co-optimization and predictive technology. He earned PhD in Microelectronics at The University of Texas at Austin in 1993.

Also re-watch below my Interview with Greg Yeric:

STM32H7 ARM Cortex-M7 by STMicroelectronics

Posted by – November 26, 2016

STMicroelectronics has on display their ARM Cortex-M7. The H7 is the successor to the F7. The H7 uses 40nm process node over 90nm for the F7, allowing for a higher 400MHz clock speed (compared to 200MHz). The demo setup is running a fractal program and has UARC, Ethernet and several display outputs. The faster speeds allows for graphics processing that earlier needed Cortex-A cores, with audio applications possible as well.

NXP HomeKit SDK on Kinetis K64F ARM Cortex-M4 development board

Posted by – November 26, 2016

NXP here is displaying their development system for Apple HomeKit. It consists of an RGB LED lightbulb being controlled through the setup using Bluetooth LE, with Siri integration. It uses an ARM Cortex-M4 CPU. Also on display is a Point-of-Sale kit (SLN POS RDR). Lastly we see NXP’s modular IoT gateway that supports Zigbee, WiFi, Ethernet, and NFC.

Technologic Systems at ARM Techcon 2016

Posted by – November 26, 2016

Arizona-based Technologic Systems makes boards for embedded applications using ARM CPUs and Linux support packages. Their field applications engineer displays a range of boards with Marvell, NXP, FreeScale Semiconductor, and Cavium processors. Their BAT12 system on display is meant to provide power backup for a few hours in case of loss. They also display their range of LCD monitors with full computers built onto the back of them.

Minix TV Boxes at ARM Techcon 2016

Posted by – November 26, 2016

Minix is a Hong Kong-based set top box manufacturer that has on display their entire range here. The bestselling model uses an RK3188 CPU (quad-core Cortex-A9) with an Ethernet port, 1GB RAM and 16GB of NAND flash. The X7 and X7 mini, their most mature platform, is used by companies to use their own software which is then sold to end consumers utilising digital signage. The S905 uses a 64-bit CPU, and supports 30fps 4K video. There is also a model with a 3G/4G SIM card and a PCI-E port for adding faster wireless cards or SSDs.

ComTech IoT location providing hardware and software

Posted by – November 26, 2016

ComTech, a company that makes location offerings, is displaying here their solutions for obtaining location on ARM mbed. On display are three mbed setups that use cellular networks, GPS, and WiFi. The company provides the APIs and the SDKs to ARM mbed, and offer a cloud service for assistance in finding locations.

DevicePilot IoT operational management

Posted by – November 26, 2016

Keith Reed, CEO of DevicePilot, explains about operational management in IoT. The company helps companies that deploy smart solutions, to ensure that their smart devices are kept up-to-date with the latest firmware and that they are functional. An example for the company is one of their clients that supply fire alarms – DevicePilot assists in ensuring that the alarms are functional.

SpinDance IoT development service for ARM mbed Ecosystem

Posted by – November 26, 2016

Tom Miller, VP of Marketing for SpinDance, discusses the functions of the company. SpinDance provides turnkey solutions for companies that want to make smart products. Their demo product is one that is intended to be used for disasters/emergencies; it consists of a split ball that can be thrown into a collapsed building, for example, to detect sound and measure temperature, humidity and air pressure.

ATGames Zuma Gamers Portal, gameplay streaming, chat, interactive

Posted by – November 26, 2016

ATgames shows their ARM Powered video game streaming platform, streaming retro games and any game, their game broadcasting platform runs on the ARM Cortex-A15 server chip previously developed by Calxeda. The Zuma service client captures screenshots from a user which is then uploaded to their server. They also have on display the consoles, one being a handheld Sega/Atari console running on ARM Cortex-A7, and a Sega Genesis console running on ARM Cortex-A9. The company has apps for both Windows and Android.

Cavium Octeon TX, 64bit ARMv8 for networking, security and storage

Posted by – November 21, 2016

Cavium, a fabless semiconductor company based in California, has on display here their Octeon TX 81XX board. It has a quad-core ARMv8 processor for embedded applications, going up to 24 cores. The demo setup consists of an IoT gateway, using temperature and humidity sensors. It can use Bluetooth, WiFi, or cellular data.

Silicon Labs Flex Gecko 32bit wireless SoC

Posted by – November 21, 2016

Silicon Labs, a US-based silicon, software and IoT developer, has demoed here their Flex Gecko 32-bit wireless multi-protocol SoC that runs on ARM’s mbed platform. It has support for 2.4GHz frequency band and 6LoWPAN, allowing for transmission over IEEE 802.15.4. It can also support Bluetooth Low Energy specification. The MCU can use ARM Cortex-M3 or M4 for processing. If you have a license for white band or sub Ghz band then it can also be configured to send and receive the data at 600Mhz and 700Mhz. It can work with a power as high as 20 dBm.

Mentor Graphics at ARM TechCon 2016 shows Games, Industrial Robots, Medical Devices and Security

Posted by – November 5, 2016

Ricardo Anguiano of Mentor Graphics describes a memory wall game demo built with the Nucleus RTOS and thirty six NXP FRDM-K64F boards and touchscreens, plus a Boundary Devices BD-SL-i.MX6 game controller which also runs the Nucleus RTOS. Phong Chau of Cepheid discusses their new GeneXpert Omni, a point of care molecular diagnostic system built with Mentor Embedded Linux. Also covered in the video is a Mentor Graphics industrial automation robot demo which runs both the safety-critical functionality and the HMI control running on the same SoC using hardware enforced separation with implications for safety certification feasibility and safety certification cost control. The video ends with a brief computer security discussion, how security doesn’t lend itself to soundbites, and how the industry still makes the same security mistakes we were making since the 60s and how security applies to the Internet of Things and to the Automotive market.

Red Hat on ARM Servers, growth opportunities at ARM Techcon 2016

Posted by – November 4, 2016

Jon Masters, Chief ARM Architect at RedHat and Yan Fisher, RedHat Hyperscale Platforms Product Marketing Lead, talk about the traction in the industry for the ARM Servers, where Red Hat talks about running the same unmodified OS on 10 different ARM SoC vendor’s hardware, where Red Hat expects significant adoption in the next 12 months as customers ask for Linux on ARM, Red Hat can help these customers deploy, support and upgrade. As next generation better ARM Server solutions are getting ready to be deployed. ARM was talking about 20% of new servers by 2020 could be ARM Servers, Red Hat is bullish and thinks it could be higher.