ARM Community: ARM TechCon 2012 Day 1 - Cortex-A50 Launch, Panel Discussion and Busy Sessions - ARM Community

‘Welcome to the biggest and best ARM^® TechCon^TM ever’ was how Simon Segars, EVP and General Manager Processor and Physical IP of ARM, could have opened his keynote this morning here in a warm and sunny Santa Clara. I’m here at the 8^th ARM TechCon where, during his keynote, Simon announced the new ARM Cortex™-A50 processor series, based upon the ARMv8 architecture. The series initially includes the Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57 processors and introduces a new, energy-efficient 64-bit processing technology, which was announced at last year’s ARM TechCon, as well as extending existing 32-bit processing. Take a look at Simon’s keynote over on the ARMFlix channel.


At the end of the keynote Simon was joined on stage for a short panel session with key representatives from five of the six lead partners working with ARM on the Cortex-A50 series, namely Karl Freund, VP Marketing, Calxeda, John Kalkman, vice president of marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Bob Krysiak, Executive Vice President of STMicroelectronics and President of the Company's Americas Region, STMicroelectronics, Andrew Feldman, corporate vice president and general manager Data Center Server Solutions business unit, AMD, and Martyn Humphries, VP and GM, Mobile Application Processors Group, Broadcom.

Following on from Simon’s keynote was a second keynote from Jack Sun, VP, Research & Development and Chief Technology Officer, TSMC. Jack talked about TSMC rolling out risk production of 16nm FinFET process by the end of 2013 and 10nm FinFET by the end of 2015. He explained that FinFET technology gets the industry back to the typical expected scaling for performance and power. Jack discussed that TSMC have been collaborating with ARM on joint optimization of 16FinFET and Cortex-A57 to support a strong roadmap of leading edge processors.

Back the new processor introductions, there have been a number of blogs published today which can tell you the full story of the new product introductions and how these products align with other ARM technology. Take a look at the blogs home page for blogs from Andy Nightingale on ARM CoreLink 500 System IP – Enabling 64-bit big.LITTLE, Ian Smythe on Mali-T600 Series Completing the ARM 64-bit System Story, Lawrence Bryant on Pushing the Boundaries and an insight into the feelings of the processor they keep calling little by Brian Jeff in ARM Cortex-A53 – Who You callin’ LITTLE?.

For more details of the processors themselves take a look at the video from Brian Jeff on the Cortex-A53 and from Nandan Nayampally on the Cortex-A57.




The show was particularly busy today – I saw one sponsored session where the attendees were queuing up out of the door to get the latest updates from the one of the sponsored sessions. There are more free-to-attend sponsored sessions over the next couple of days – it’s not too late to turn up and register.


Days two and three of the conference are be geared towards systems designers and software developers, those interested in building ARM processor-based modules, boards, and systems. It covers all of the hardware and software, tools, ranging from low-power design, networking and connectivity to Android™ and open source software to safety and security.

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.