ARM Community: CES: Technologies becoming a reality - ARM Community

CES was a great show for ARM, there were plenty of ARM powered smartphones, families of Mali™ GPU enabled Android tablets, from entry level brands to the latest Google Nexus 10 with 2.5K displays, and larger than ever Mali GPU enabled 4K smartTVs.

We had a record number of meetings with Ecosystem partners, Operators, SIPs and OEMs. There was a great deal of interest around Renderscript and OpenCL, and in particular the fact that ARM was the only IP provider to offer a full profile 64- bit GPU compute platform today. OpenGL ES 3.0 features were also a major hit with our partners.


Mali GPUs bring the graphics experience to over 50% of the Android based tablets and more than 70% of the smart DTVs. Samsung showcased their latest DTVs and the revolutionary evolution upgrade kits and LG introduced their latest Google TV. Additionally, there were a large number of Chinese based smart DTVs using the Cortex™-A9 and Mali-400 MP combination as well.

Ultra High Definition 4K and OLED everywhere
UHD was everywhere, with the TV manufacturers showing various sizes of 4K (55” and above). It felt like OLED had finally arrived; Samsung showed off their newer 55" OLED TV, LG unveiled a 55" curved OLED prototype, while Sony and Panasonic demonstrated their jointly developed 56" 4K OLED TV.


Samsung’s evolution kit was a neat way of upgrading your TV for the latest games and UI content without having to go out and purchase a new set.

Natural UI and content discovery
‘Gesture’ controls have come a long way since they were first introduced and there is still the opportunity for improvement across many of the TV OEMS, but ‘Voice’ control with a combination of local and cloud support for content discovery worked much better than last year.


Haier demonstrated new ways of interacting with your TV, from ‘Voice’ to ‘Gesture’ to ‘Eye tracking’ to ‘Brain Wave tracking’. Some of these techniques are still in the prototype stage, but it was nice to see a number of the Chinese TV OEMs, showing other manufacturers where the future of TV could go.

Sony demonstrated their “Book of Spells” on a PlayStation, while Gaming companies such as Virtual Air Guitar were also capturing players and inserting them into the game play (e.g. “Kung-Fu High impact). With the ever increasing processing and graphics performance and the start of GPU compute, we could expect to see this type gaming in TVs at next year’s CES.

Cisco showcased their “fresco” video wall, although not new and still in prototype stage, it clearly demonstrated a next generation TV platform where social, smart home control, web and TV search could be integrated across your traditional tablet/mobile and TV platforms to be streamed to your “nearest video wall”.

Touch was everywhere at CES, it moved from tablets to PCs to TVs with a number of the OEMs showing touch enabled TVs. LG, for example, showed the ability to manipulate images and content on the fly, across their largest DTVs and next generation 21:9 Ultra wide screens for immersive entertainment.

Sharing content
Sharing content between devices and the main TV screen felt more robust and more consumer-friendly. The blurring of boundaries between broadcast and streamed content, combining our social network with the ability to easily find and share content was everywhere.

All the TV manufacturers had a range of tablets and smartphones, where content could be shared seamlessly.

Tablets
Android based tablets could be seen throughout the show, powered by a multitude of ARM Cortex/ Mali GPU based partners from Amlogic to Telechips.

MasterImage3D showed off their latest 3D “glass-less” technology targeted at tablets, which was one of the best demos of 3D glass-less technology I have seen to date.

Paper-like tablets (developed by Plastic Logic and Queens University Canada) still felt in the prototype stage, but they start to show how flexible tablets could interact with other tablets and what they could look like in the future.

Big Tablets & Fridges
A number of OEMS (e.g. Panasonic) were showing off 4K prototype 20” tablets, while Toshiba demonstrated tablets being integrated into a whole range of connected white goods.


***
As always, CES never fails to impress with the latest consumer technology and forward looking trends. I was delighted to see many ARM powered devices on show.

With the ever increasing consumer and OEM demands, ARM and the partnership are well placed to enable these next generation products.

I look forward to MWC in February, where we will see many more ARM powered devices.

Jim Wallace, VP Marketing – Competitive Positioning, ARM. Jim has over 27 years of managing consumer marketing and business development, engineering and business units across a number of hi-tech semiconductor companies, including GEC Plessey Semiconductors, Mitel, Philips, Zarlink and CSR. Jim re-joined ARM in 2012 and leads the Graphics and Compute positioning strategy. His special expertise is in the enablement of digital content delivery across multiple platforms. He began his career as an analog design engineer in Eindhoven after earning a BEng from the University of Limerick.