ARM Community: ARM Techcon: Marvell & IBM keynotes, Processor Optimizations and MCU Coffee - ARM Community

Hello from the ARM Technology Conference 2010 (Techcon) in Santa Clara, California. In its sixth year of consistent growth, Techcon’s registrations are up over 50% from last year.

The buzz from Day One included:

• highlights from Marvell keynote on always-on connected devices
• IBM’s keynote on how Moore’s Law is continuing to scale for smaller processes
• ARM’s Artisan Physical IP process optimization packages and the
• recent NXP, Fujitsu and Energy Micro’s Cortex-M announcements and demos including
• how I’m going to have my first MCU-powered cup of coffee tomorrow

Per my tradition, I’ll start with my weather update. True to form my arrival into the USA on Sunday was met with rainy weather in the San Francisco and San Jose areas but I’m pleased to say the bad weather that has greeted me for each one of my trips to the USA this year has all cleared away and I awoke this Tuesday morning to a wonderful sunny day, all ready for the first day of this three day ARM technology and ARM developer focused show.

Marvell and IBM keynotes: Moore’s Law will Keep Up with Always On Connected Devices
Keynotes at the show this morning were from Jason Tjeng, Director of Engineering at Marvell Semiconductor and Dr. Gary Patton, VP Semiconductor Research and Development Center at IBM.

Also, Simon Segars, EVP and GM of the ARM Physical IP division, spent a few minutes with us detailing his thoughts on the key points in the following video:



Marvell highlighted the increasing prevalence of always on, connected devices. In order to achieve these features, Marvell is optimizing the chip implementations that Marvell is trying to build with ARM technology. Marvell’s new 1.6 GHz quad-core Cortex-A9 chip product announcement from yesterday I suspect will be discussed in Dr. Sehat Sutardja Keynote on Wednesday.

IBM discussed the challenges of delivering Moore’s Law with the ever increasing process technology. Dr. Patton showed a pipeline of future technology that shows that Moore’s Law is indeed not dead and there is a lot of technology in the pipeline that will continue to allow scaling. IBM’s announcement from yesterday describes more information.

ARM Physical IP News: Processer Optimizations
Further in the video Dr. John Heinlein, VP of Marketing, ARM Physical IP division highlights ARM’s two announcements: 32nm Cortex-A9 Processor Optimizations and Processor Optimization Pack. Jinson Koppanalil dives deeper in his blog 1GHz+ Cortex-A9 Implementation with ARM Artisan POP on the first announcement.

We captured some of the key points from these keynotes in addition to our chats with Simon Segars and John Heinlein in the short video above summarising just a few of the highlights of the day.

NXP, Fujitsu and Energy Micro’s Cortex-M announcements
Some other news that has emerged in time for the show includes the announcement last week of NXP’s Dual-Core Cortex-M4 and Cortex-M0 MCU redefining Digital Signal Control.

Today there has been a flurry of announcements from Energy Micro including a demonstration of the future of smart energy harvesting. Find out more from the news release.

Fujitsu have announced a comprehensive offering of 44 new Cortex-M3 based MCUs.

My ARM MCU-powered coffee!
Make sure you come back tomorrow for more updates on the day’s events and announcements and see if I manage to get my first cup of Cortex-M3 created coffee.

Also remember to keep an eye out on the ARMFlix You Tube channel for more news, interviews and product demonstrations from the following two days of the show.

Andy Frame, CPU Product Manager, ARM, is based in Cambridge and is fanatical about the success of the Cortex-M3 and how it is rapidly becoming the de-facto standard for 32-bit MCU’s. Since joining ARM in 1995, Andy has had a variety of roles from Software Tools Technical Training though to Business Development, joining the CPU product management team about two years ago to look after Cortex-M3.

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