ARM Community: Multimedia - ARM Community

Last week I visited the China Content Broadcasting Network Exhibition (CCBN) 2013, which took place in Beijing.

This is the largest broadcasting technology and equipment expo in the Asia-Pacific region and covers a whole range of broadcast related products including head end equipment, set-top boxes (STB), transcoders and media streamers.

Whilst this show primarily focused on the mass market STB with 2D graphics and low cost CPUs, many STB OEMs and operators were showing off next generation AVS+ video solutions, touch-less advanced user interfaces (UI), such as gesture controlled and Over The Top (OTT) technologies; all of these are key drivers for higher performance graphics and compute requirements going forward. 4K displays were also on show from Sony and StreamTV Networks who demonstrated their Glass Free 4K display.

Changhong Gesture UI

Sumavision Gesture Interaction Technology

While AVS has not been a great s...

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...

Last week I was in Korea and Taiwan as part of the ARM Technical Symposia series of events happening in November and December. With the momentum behind Mali GPUs I was asked to come and talk about the innovations that we have seen recently, the challenges that we see coming up and how we propose to help to address them. One of these key opportunities is round the potential being enabled by graphics processing. Mali GPUs can now be found in over 200 end devices and many of these are coming out from the vibrant Android smartphone and tablet markets.

Graphics are becoming more central to consumer devices and we have seen a step change in the graphics performance available in smartphones, tablets and DTVs in the ...

In the graphics arena we spend a lot of time talking about the challenges of supporting the increasing content complexity and enhanced user experience demand for mobile devices. The actual GPU technology is only part of the story - the ability to manufacture this technology in a way that maximizes the performance, whilst optimizing the energy efficiency is a continuous balance and is set to become even more important as SoCs become more complex.

ARM several years ago identified the need to optimize the physical IP to match the underlying process technology with the processor being manufactured. The result of this was the ARM® POP™ IP products – these are core-hardening acceleration technology to enable the production of the best ARM processor implementations, in the shortest time to market. They provide the ability to optimize for different requirements – maximum performance, lowest power or a combination of the two. It gives the flexibility to designers ...

The unprecedented pace of change in the Digital TV (DTV) space is set to continue with resolutions increasing as viewing becomes more realistic, this in conjunction with the change in the viewing habits away from set viewing times to viewing whenever and wherever you are, are changing the face of DTVs going forward. This blog looks at some of the key trends in the DTV space over the next few years that will transform the way we use and interact with the largest screen in our homes.

Resolutions: will continue to increase with High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and 4k2k adoption - 1080p broadcast based on HEVC is bringing higher quality video to 4k2k screens - 4k2k is expected to be the main creator of demand for next generation DTV. The resolutions cannot be fully experienced without matching content resolutions, enabling the viewer to fully benefit from the increased screen resolution. 4k2k is expected to show similar resolutions to those obtained with 35mm films - movie studios are already moving towards being able to provide 4k2k content. The first 4k2k content is expected to be delivered via Blu ray, game consoles and personal video camcorder/DSLR. The broadcast version...

The smart TV market has gone from concept to mass production over the last two years and 2012 saw an explosion of smart TVs being launched at CES which were summarised in Nizar Romdhane’s blog. The key products on show clearly demonstrated the pace of innovation in the DTV space, and one of the main features making these smart TVs popular is the improved user experience which has been enabled through enhanced user interfaces. Consumers are now able to intuitively interact with their DTV as they do with any other consumer product today, such as smartphones and tablets. The ability to play games without a console whilst accessing a wider range of content in a seamless way are all made possible due to the high-performance graphics that are now an integral part of the smart TV solution.

The applications processors now at the heart of most smart TVs are more often than not using the ...

It’s certainly been an action packed first quarter for ARM and our ARM® Mali™ Ecosystem Partners, and we hope you’ve had a chance to catch up with us at one or more of the recent string of events. If not, there are many more opportunities coming up! Here is a wrap up of the event highlights from our perspective.

Consumer Electronic Show (CES), Las Vegas
We kicked off with the annual wake up from the Christmas holidays at CES in Las Vegas, where ARM Powered® products filled the show floor and members of the ARM team clocked up many miles of walking from hall to hall and from meeting to meeting – a tiring but hugely productive few days. Check out for yourself the wide range of products that were on show by viewing our CES Playlist on the ARMFlix YouTube channel. There is also a range of CES blogs, all wrapped up in Andy Frame’s day 4 ...

If you attended CES this year you must have noticed that it was all about Smart TV and even if you didn’t attend you must have heard or read about it everywhere. Yes, the Smart TV has finally arrived.

Quoting the late Steve Jobs in his memorable speech at Stanford University “you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards”, at CES this year it was clear to me how the dots connect to the Smart TV. It all started when TVs went digital. Then the race to HD and 3D pushed the resolutions and highlighted the need to increase the computing capabilities. Bringing Internet connectivity at last year’s CES was a major step but it wasn’t until full application processors made their way into the TV that it has finally become “smart”. This year at CES the Smart TV was everywhere.

So what is making the new application processors so special that the Smart TVs they enable took over the show? Processors made their way into TVs a while back but the main difference with the application processors inside ARM Powered® Smart TVs is that they have the powerful 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 ...

Today we announced the ARM® Mali™-T604 GPU, the first implementation of ARM’s new Midgard architecture. The increase in screen resolutions and the demand for better-looking and more intuitive displays needs a huge increase in graphics capability. These demands for the highest levels of performance and flexibility, support for new APIs such as Khronos™ OpenCL™ and Microsoft® DirectX®, all in an energy-efficient way called for a new embedded GPU architecture...

Wait. That was a bit dull. It didn’t have the why, the how, or my excitement! Let me try again:

What
At last; it’s here. We’ve been hinting, and I’ve been bursting to tell ...

Recently, a lot of airline miles have been flown between my team and ARM partners to engage in conversations about the latest and future uses of GPUs. Mostly, I have been discussing our graphics roadmap which I still can’t tell you about publicly, but I also got a chance to see some of the latest cool demos on our current GPUs. I also got a chance to hear from our partners – about the slew of consumer products that are coming out soon based on our technology, and about the things they are doing with our GPUs. These partners, a fantastic collection of the most important companies in our industry, really are doing it all: printers, PNDs, digital still cameras, digital TV, set-top-box, automotive, mobile computing, and ...

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...

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People often ask me “so why does everyone get so excited about the touch screen phones?” What they really want to know is what is the secret sauce that’s led to the explosion of sleek keypad less objects which we love to stroke and poke? Well it’s actually pretty simple...It is in our nature as human beings to interact through visual and tactile means.

Here is a simple illustration... A while ago I took up diving and spent many happy hours drifting around in the red sea looking at all the pretty coloured life that abounds in the warm seas off the Sinai peninsula. After I gained a little more experience and confidence it was very interesting to watch newbie’s diving for the first time. One of the rules of diving, particularly around coral reefs is Don’t Touch! Primarily to protect the wild life, but also to protect you from yourself, as some of the prettier things are actually pretty nasty. Even though having been told this the enticement to touch and interact with all these new fabulous weird and wonderful creatures is extremely hard to suppress. They taunt you with their vivid colours, playful dances and energetic displays. It’s this urge to interact in this way that the device manufacturers have tapped into. Using the performance available to them through GPU and CPU technology device manufacturers are enticing us to inte...