ARM Community: Multimedia - ARM Community

H.265, more popularly known as HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding), is the newest addition to the long list of video codecs that have evolved in the last two decades. HEVC promises improved video quality and double the compression ratio of its predecessor, H.264/AVC. This dramatic compression and quality improvement is achieved through significantly more complex tools in the coding scheme.


Figure 1: Graph comparing bit rate levels across MPEG-2, H.264 and H.265.

The HEVC standard is targeted at meeting the needs of higher resolution displays (Ultra HD) and advanced media services on multiple end points: TVs, set-top boxes, smartphones and tablets.

Early Adopters
HEVC deployment brings about a host of benefits – up to 50...

Cool Compute – Is Now the Time to Harness Mobile GPU Compute?
Modern mobile GPU architectures, such as ARM®’s, endorse parallelism as the route to deliver the performance and power efficiency essential to push the growing number of pixels required to put compelling applications on our screens. But can all this power efficient GPU performance be harnessed by developers of non-graphics applications?

Today’s graphic cores can already deliver in excess of 60 GFLOPS of compute and it is claimed that their increasing GFLOPS/watt will exceed Moore's law. With all this theoretical performance on offer it is only natural to want to tap into it to develop the next cool application, but is it easier said than done?

Performance from Parallelism is Notoriously Difficult

Extracting performance from parallel architectures is notoriously difficult in all but the most obvious of cases – a fast and fancy Mandelbrot has never been much of a proof statement for me! And using existing APIs like OpenGL® to implement compute algorithms can often be, to put it kindly, not intuitive for the non-graphics programmer. However, the results can be compelling when the algorithms and APIs fit. We only have to look at the desktop GPGPU landscape to see wh...

The annual Game Developers Conference (GDC), which took place last week in San Francisco, is always an exciting event for the ARM Mali team. This year the ARM booth was buzzing with activity – we had a multiplayer gaming challenge (winners received Nexus 10’s!), a wall of Mali demos, technical presentations on the booth from ARM engineers and our Partners, and demonstrations of our Partners’ latest products running on Mali-based devices.


Here is a wrap-up of what I managed to capture:

ARM TOOLS

To get an update on tools and resources available to Mali developers, I spoke with Anand Patel, the product manager of Mali Tools at ARM. The videos below cover:

ARM Develop...

The Game Developers Conference is now a week away and dawning bright and clear on ARM's horizon. The largest and most professional event in the games industry calendar, this conference gets bigger and better year on year and 2013 is set to be no different, especially for ARM and its partners. By providing a comprehensive forum for gaming developers to showcase the industry's most recent and relevant tools, platforms and services the event propels innovation within the industry and defines the future of gaming.

Where else would the ARM Multimedia Team rather be?

"The Future of Mobile Gaming", an ARM-sponsored panel discussion, will undoubtedly be one of the highlights of the show. Featuring Baudouin Corman (VP Publishing Americas, Gameloft), David Helgason (CEO, Unity), Dr Chris Doran (Founder & COO, Geomerics), Niccolo De Masi (CEO, Glu), Jasper Smith (CEO, PlayJam) and Nizar Romdhane (Director of Ecosystem, ARM), this hour-long, audience-participative debate will place technology in the context of design and business, covering critical questions such as how the rapid increase in popularity of mobile de...

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 larg...

In November 2011, the world did not know that it would be possible to pack a 1080p capable GPU, a 1.2 GHz CPU, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth into a USB stick sized device until FXI Technologies demonstrated the Cotton Candy™ any screen micro computer in fabulous New York. Something happened when we did that. First of all, it showcased the possibilities enabled by the ARM ecosystem. FXI was a small, but dedicated team in Norway and South Korea that had pulled out something new and sweet (some would say fluffy) from the magic hat of innovation. Second, it showed the world that high-end ARM SoCs are not confined to smart phones and tablets and mobile devices, but can drive any screen and any potential application. There is an ongoing string of innovation validating this point since, most recently with the announcement of the ARM-powered Samsung Chromebook.



The rec...

在移动设备领域，平板电脑市场迅速崛起，其中Android 平板增长尤为明显。在2012年，平板电脑出货量预期将达到100M， 并预计在2016年前出货将会超过200M，其中Android平板电脑比重将超过50% （来源：IDC）。



平板电脑的兴起及其强劲发展态势为一些...

The dynamics of the mobile device industry can be seen in the rise of tablets and in particular the growth in Android based tablets. This new form factor has grown to an expected 100M shipping volume in 2012 with this being projected to exceed 200M by 2016 – when Android tablet shipments is expected to be over 50% (Source: IDC). This new form factor and pace of change have opened up opportunities for new companies to offer specific System on Chip (SoC) businesses a chance to address this market. Allwinner Technology Co., Ltd.is one of these. Over the last 12 months Allwinner Technology has become one of the major China Android tablet SoC chip vendors, with many of the Android tablet OEM system makers adopting our chip and system solu...

Everyone is excited by Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) and no wonder! Google’s "most ambitious release to date" rolls out many new features that look very promising indeed: zero-click NFC sharing (Android Beam), a unified OS for smartphones and tablets, a new UI (with resizable widgets), single motion panoramic camera, face unlock, live effects and so on. And this time it will all be Open Source. All great, but to be honest, what I am really excited about is a less advertised technology called RenderScript, which in ICS takes another significant stride towards maturity. And why does this excite me? Because RenderScript is the API that will soon enough enable GPU Computing) in Android.

Crash course in Android RenderScript

So, what is RenderScript? It is a new programming framework and API for Android, which Google originally introduced in Honeycomb. In ...

The growth of internet TV and the increased demands on DTVs and STBs started a new era of the home application market. At the various home application exhibitions, the key OEMs are all displaying their latest SmartTVs and STBs, such as Samsung, LG, HiSense and Skyworth. Look at these products closely and you’ll find they are ARM powered! The growing momentum not only has placed the SmartTV at the center of home entertainment, but also changed the structure of the market players.

ARM open source support with Android™ and Linux
With close and continuous collaboration with Google on the ARM architecture and Android system, this combined hardware and software solution attracts more and more Apps developers and enables faster development cycles. ARM la...

Many times on my travels through the world of embedded GPUs I have come across someone asking “How easy is it to port my game to Mali™?” Well.....actually it’s not difficult at all, and this is reflected in the ARM® Mali™ Ecosystem. Let’s start by looking at the Ecosystem and its growth. Having now reached a massive half a million activations a day, Android is where it’s at! Especially now the Samsung Galaxy S2 has hit the market. The S2 is a dual core ARM® ...

你能回想起那一段在你拥有全彩色触摸屏幕智能手机，能让你通过点击和滑动丰富图形界面，轻松浏览您的电子邮件、日历和喜爱的游戏之前的时光么？高科技快速发展和其设备在如今都已经非常人性化和直观，消费者越来越习惯快速地掌握很多信息和娱乐资讯——以至于我们对这些设备都觉得理所当然。智能手机、平板电脑及一系列其他消费电子设备的性能日新月异，有时候我们需要花一点时间来感激这些科技带给我们的好处。

今天的消费者需要从一个设备到下一个设备无缝互联的用户体验。我们再也不能在通讯、社交、娱乐和全球导航的生活中没有我们的智能手机、平板电脑、数字电视和车载设备。根据一项调查发现，有84%的平板用户主要是玩游戏，但预估会有更多的时间花费在电子邮件或社交网站上。从最小屏幕的平价智能手机，到平板电脑，再到占据�...

3月30日上午, 创维在北京瑞创艺术中心举办了Android智能3D电视发布会, 本人有幸被邀请参加了此次活动. 在中国, 举办新品发布会应该说并不鲜见, 但此次发布的Android智能电视新品却有着些许不寻常的意义: 预计是国内第一款上市销售的Android电视; 全球首款采用ARM Cortex-A9 和Mali 400图形处理器的量产电视; 众多全新应用将彻底改变消费者对电视的传统理解.

会场的布置非常讲究, 蓝色的背景和灯光设计使现场充满了魔幻和科技感, Android机器人和动画标志随处可见, 由此可见创维对此次活动的高度重视和期待!



发布会以杨东文总裁的发言开始, 他对智能电视的趋势和创维的发展战略做了相当深入的阐述; 接着几位营销负责人对创维Android智能电视做了详细的介绍. Amlogic CEO钟培峰先生的演讲虽然简短, 但措词精辟,�...

On the heels of CES 2011, where ARM products were everywhere from handsets, smartphones, tablets, DTVs and STBs, as well as Microsoft’s announcement to support Windows on ARM , comes the latest announcement from Sony Computer Entertainment on its next generation portable entertainment system, codename NGP.

It uses a very high performance, energy efficient quad core ARM ...

The number of Android based devices continues to explode in the smartphone market. As more Android smartphones are introduced into the market the ability to differentiate continues to be a challenge for many mobile device manufactures. This blog articulates how using an OpenMAX compliant Media framework as the foundation for building versatile multimedia applications can enable device manufacturers to differentiate their smart mobile devices.

Mobile multimedia applications and services have become a key area where device manufacturers can innovate and differentiate. Mobile consumers are demanding more video and audio applications and capabilities. In parallel, operators are seeking to increase revenue in new 3G and 4G networks by introducing various video and audio based services. The challenge for device manufacturers is to effectively service the mobile consumer while controlling their costs and delivering innov...

The telecom and IT industries have for decades made much of technology convergence. Convergence of wireless and terrestrial. Convergence of voice and data. And most recently, convergence of mobile and desktop computing.

Mobile-desktop convergence has led to new form factors, like netbooks and now the iPad, offering intriguing hybrids of mostly existing capabilities. So far, it has created new categories of devices, without eliminating laptops and handsets. True convergence would mean fewer gadgets in users’ lives, not simply introducing new ones.

The explosive growth of smartphones and accompanying applications, increasingly deployed on ARM Cortex™ processors, finally promises to deliver convergence. Today’s smartphones, especially handsets built on Android, offer new options for worker productivity beyond voice, texting, and email. But pocket-size smartphones still limit full productivity due to small screens & keyboards.

Earlier th...

Are you curious about Android on ARM? Are you interested in learning about the broad applications that Android is deployed (it’s not just mobile)? Then I invite you to join a webinar tomorrow (Tuesday May 25 11 am PDT) on Android and ARM by my colleagues Rod Crawford, principal software engineer and Jim Wallace, director of Home segment marketing. They are both well versed in the current Android trends. I invite you to come ask them a tough question (just don’t tell them I sent you:)


The momentum behind Android across a multitude of connected consumer devices continues to grow. The ARM ecosystem Partners have found that the connectivity, application and con...

On the 26th March ARM brought together a selection of Partners to present a daylong seminar focusing on the key elements affecting products being designed for the Home. This Home Seminar was attended by over 200 attendees from all the major ODM and SOC suppliers. The topics covered included the coming of Internet access and multimedia, the software re-use model, leveraging mobile solutions in non mobile applications, highlighting the Open Source environment and the diverse ARM ecosystem. The presentations were split between ARM and the following Partners covering the complete supply chain from Operator to SOC to Software partners:

Chunghwa Telecom a major Taiwanese ISP, talked about how they expect IPTV to change the whole industry. With Full HD, 3D UI and Fibre networking highlighted as the key tr...