ARM Community: ARM TechCon 2012 Day 2- Great Keynotes, Samsung Innovation, and Cadence on Cortex-M0 - ARM Community

Simon Segars, EVP and General Manager Processor and Physical IP of ARM, once again opened the event for day two of the biggest ARM event of the year, after launching the ARM Cortex^TM-A53 and Cortex-A57 processors in his opening keynote. This time he was compared as he firstly introduced us to Dr. Jonathan Koomey, Consulting Professor, Stanford University who gave a captivating presentation on the computing revolution that is happening today and how this is affected by computing efficiency. A great example was given of a product that really show the Internet of Things (IoT) at work today with the Big Belly solar powered trash (UK: rubbish) compactor which is environmentally friendly in so many ways. Firstly it compacts the stuff we throw away by a factor of five and then when it’s totally full it sends a message to the garbage collector (UK: bin men) so they can schedule the most efficient way of popping round and emptying it – the costs of collecting are therefore greatly reduced and the wasted collection of half empty bins is stopped, so less greenhouse gas from the collection vehicle. Another example of efficiency was the pill from Proteus biomedical which, once it hits the digestive juices (which provide its power), sends a message to a skin out-of-body based patch which tells the required systems that the pill has been taken – great for those that need to be monitored, for example, patients who frequently forget to take their medication. This thing has no battery what so ever – talk about energy harvesting. Dr Koomey spent some time clarifying ‘Moore’s law’ as being the doubling of components on chip double every two years (it was every year when first written in a paper in the 1960’s but was subsequently updated in the 1970’s). Another example of low power technology today helping the environment was given with Streetline which uses sensors in parking spaces to send information to the cloud to enable you to find a parking space without driving all over the city to find a parking space. I found this to be a really good keynote and particularly like how it was finished with the statement ‘The future belongs to low power systems!’ - seems like a good fit for ARM technology don’t you think?

John Kalkman of Samsung Semiconductor followed with a keynote looking at enablement of the Super Devices of tomorrow. John highlighted that system design and integration are key. Building today and tomorrow’s new devices require a holistic approach to integration of CPU, GPU, modem, etc to make the best products. Recent trends showed a growing segmentation of devices – whether by cost, data usage, application, screen size or ecosystem. John highlighted some recent Exynos 5 based devices including Chromebook and Google Nexus tablets as key wins. Exynos 5 are built with a dual core Cortex-A15, ARM Mali™-T604, ARM Artisan™ physical IP and ARM Development Studio 5 (DS-5™) toolchain. These devices are examples of the growing high end segmentation and that one type of device doesn’t fit all.

Take a look at the ARMFlix channel where Akshay Agrawal of Samsung semiconductor discussed the latest end devices built with the Samsung Exynos 5 Dual processor, such as the Samsung Chromebook and Google Nexus 10 tablet.



Akshay Agrawal also discussed the $249 Arndale community board built with Samsung Exynos 5 Dual.



Recently ARM have been working with Cadence to show how easy it is for a mixed signal designer to make use of Cortex-M processors in their designs. Today I chatted with Mladen Nizic about this and how ARM and Cadence have worked together to create a prototype to satisfy this requirement and what we can expect in the future.



Today finished off with a Halloween bash where we were able to mix with some of the scariest looking characters in the technology world (but enough about my colleagues), and also some of the exhibitors who dressed up in fancy dress for the occasion.

Looking forward to tomorrow, there is an awful lot going on: at 9:00 am Warren East, ARM CEO, opens the day with a keynote titled ‘Low-Power Leadership for a Smarter Future’ followed by an executive roundtable panel with panellists from ARM, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Samsung, TSMC. I’m looking forward to see who has won what in the Best in Show Awards which follows the roundtable event. The show floor, free sponsored sessions and the main conference sessions all begin at 10.30 and remember that throughout the day from 11:00 am - 3:45 pm there also are a number of panels and teardowns right there in the show floor theatre.

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.