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...

全新中文版 Mali 开发者中心今天正式上线了！开发者们可以通过链接 http://malideveloper.arm.com/cn/ 先睹为快！根据我们的统计数据，英文版 Mali 开发者中心网站的访问量排名中，中国地区仅次于北美地区，相信这次全新上线的中文版 Mali 开发者中心网站一定会为全球懂中文的 Mali 开发者提供一个更便利的平台！ 无论是来自芯片公司， OEM / ODM 还是游戏公司，软件公司以及科研院所的开发者们都能更加快速、准确的找到关于 Mali 的最新动态、行业活动、Demo 演示、开发文档、工具、驱动、参考代码，并和来自 ARM 公司内部及外部社区的广大 Mali 开发者们进行开放的技术交流！

全新的中文版 Mali 开发者中心将网站入口简化为三个： “了解 Mali ”、“ Mali 开发”和“ Mali 合作”。

图一 Mali 开发者中心

开发者们只需要通过这三个入口就可以找到所有他们需要的 Mali 开发资源。在“了解 Mali ”版块中,开发者可以了解到关于 Mali 的最新市场情况以及哪些设备搭载了 Mali GPU ，同时也可以第一时间掌握关于 Mali 的最新新闻，最酷的各种演示以及众多的 Ma...

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 ...

At the end of last week Google launched its latest Chromebook from Samsung. So what is different about this Chromebook? First off it is now ARM Powered, by the Samsung Exynos 5 Dual processor, bringing together the performance of the dual core ARM CortexTM-A15 with the graphics impact of the quad ARM MaliTM-T604. This is the first device coming to the market with the latest CPU and GPU technologies from ARM. The pairing of Cortex-A class and Mali GPUs has become the leading combination in a wide range of devices including the Samsung Galaxy SIII, LG SmartTV and a wide variety of Android tablets, with over 200 end d...

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 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...

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 ...

I will be attending the 7th Multicore Developers Conference in San Jose next week as I’m speaking on a panel there at the McEnery Convention Center, chaired by Jon Peddie, entitled “How Many Cores Does it Take to Reach the Singularity?”



The ARM Mali-400 MP was the world’s first embedded multicore GPU, and ARM has been designing multicore CPUs for over a decade now, so it is natural that we be there to talk about our experiences and to discuss future technical directions. Currently, with the ...

If you follow Jem Davies’s blog, then you may have noticed that at ARM TechCon™, he made a cryptic comment about an “exciting new Mali graphics product launch” news coming. Wait no longer! ARM just launched the new multicore Mali-T658 GPU here in Tokyo, Japan and we’ll be telling you all about it during a series of Technical Symposia around Asia in the coming weeks.

The Midgard architecture
Following on from the ...

The ARM® Mali™ Ecosystem today has a broad community of developers and Partners who have created visually-compelling applications for Android™-based platforms using Mali GPUs. The Samsung Galaxy S2, the best Android smartphone in the market today, is showing how our Partners can develop high-end games and stunning user interfaces, creating an unparalleled user experience.

ARM has developed a strategy to provide the best AR solutions by working across the Augmented Reality (AR) value chain with key Partners.

Augmented Reality is one area that greatly benefits from platforms which provide high-performance CPU plus GPU solutions within a low-power profile, as AR applications require responsive image tracking, 3D graphics and a sustained battery life to make the technology viable.

The “Augmented City”, jointly developed by ARM and ...

随着苹果公司的系列产品在市场上的推出，众多电子设备厂商发现，移动设备越变越智能，交互界面越来越人性化。电子设备不光要有硬件，同时需要有强大的软件。这对于移动设备的图形处理能力提出了新的需求。最新的硬件在CPU与GPU的配置上，开始逐步满足移动设备的需求，但是在软件上还没有一个成熟的解决方案。用户对于人性化，图形化，智能化的界面要求尤其强烈。成立于1998年的深圳盖亚信息技术有限公司抓住了这一市场契机，专注于提供基于嵌入式硬件底层的图形引擎与界面解决方案，游戏开发工具链，向硬件制造商提供完整的Android图形解决方案。

GPU渲染技术：立足市场需求，专注用户体验

面对Androi...

Taking an in-depth look at all methods used throughout the industry to compare GPU performance in the handset space as well as their accuracy (or lack thereof) is not an easy task. Uniquely this year, the Samsung Galaxy S II with Mali-400 MP according to Engadget and Techradar has unanimously set the highest benchmark score among the currently available smartphones.

Evaluating graphic performance is often a subject of controversy and involves wading in the muddy waters of 3D benchmarking. These days, consumers will often use hardware capabilities to quantify purchasing decisions and tech-savvy buyers wi...

Moore’s law is not broken: shock, horror, screaming headline! It will last for a while longer yet - new generations of silicon process will continue to give us more transistors on chips, but that won’t, on its own, give us the increases in performance and decreases in power consumption we have become used to. However, we can utilise those extra transistors, to build multicore processors and more of them, and through heterogeneous computing and appropriate use of domain-specific processors. This will give us the increased performance and improved energy-efficiency we need. These are critical areas for us to concentrate on for the future if we are to continue to lead in energy-efficiency.

At ARM, we focus on energy-efficiency: not just making IP blocks that make the best possible use of energy themselves but also that lead to partner SoCs using less energy overall (e.g. by reducing external memory bandwidth). One of today’s exciting technical challenges is heterogeneous computing, and we invest a lot of time working in this area to enable more energy-efficient consumer electronics devices. Consequently, when AMD kindly invited me to give a keynote speech at their ...

ARM’s Cortex™ family of processors and Mali™ GPU’s are the applications, media processing and graphics acceleration engines at the heart of today’s smartphones. Audio and video codecs have been implemented efficiently in software on several previous generations of ARM-based processors and more recently many of these codec implementations have been optimized to take advantage of the NEON™ coprocessor technology for higher performance and lower power. To support the growing requirement for graphical user interfaces (GUI) and 3D gaming on high resolution mobile devices ARM have added the Mali family of graphics processor units (GPU’s) to its product line up. The Mali GPUs accel...

Things have now wound down at the Moscone Center after a week of the Game Developers Conference (GDC). We’ve been catching up on what’s new, what’s cool and who’s who in the world of gaming, and after a hectic five days we’ve packed our bags and headed home.

It was a busy week, but what were the highlights? Well, for us at ARM, the rise of stereoscopic gaming was a hot topic and with our own Stereoscopic Space Racer game ‘TrueForce’ on show, we were really encouraged to see that.

The developments around gaming engines also caught our eye. Scaleform were showing their custom engine for rendering flash effectively on the GPU – it really works, it’s fast, and it makes the creation of UIs for games, in addition to UIs for applets, really easy.

The guys from Unity were also here in force, with their game engine now enabling developers to easi...

Stunning graphics powered by Mali GPUs coming to a mobile device near you!

We have been busy preparing for MWC this year – and hope to impress and inspire you with a shiny new Augmented Reality (AR) demo put together by our Cambridge demo team. Here is a taster of what you can come and see for yourself at MWC! We’ll also be catching up with our business Partners and talking about the upcoming solutions that they are building ARM® Mali™ graphics into. In the last three months alone, four more licensees in the mobile space have chosen Mali GPUs – continuing our momentum in bringing new levels of graphical capabilities to mobile handsets. This includes Spreadtrum Communications, Inc. choosing the ...

So how did we do it? How did we create the coolest new GPU and architecture? Well, a few people have asked me this recently, so I thought I’d pull together all my stories, videos and blogs into one place (or at least the ones I can mention publicly).

Recently we had The Travelling Salesman stop by on his epic journey around the Nordic start-up scene and I gave him a short interview on our story from founding a tech company right up to being acquired by ARM. You can find the video from his visit below and his blog entry. And no I don’t usually wear sunglasses around the office...



And if you want to know...

TrueForce is a spaceship racing and precision game set in an asteroid belt in a distant galaxy. The goal is to race through the track as quickly as possible while collecting point tokens and power-ups, and avoiding crashing into megatons of...

Recently we released a major update to the Linux drivers for the Mali-200 and Mali-400 MP GPUs. Like many software projects we time-box our driver development, with two major releases each year. This release (r2p0) contains a bunch of exciting new features including Android support, full SMP support, performance optimizations and some important EGL extensions. We'll talk about some of these in future blog posts, but for today I wanted to tell you about the other big change we made for r2p0: we've started to release parts of the driver stack under an open source license.

People who get excited about software licenses are not necessarily the people you invite to a dinner party for their sparkling conversation and witty repartee. In fact the terms "exciting" and "software license" are used together about as often as the words "glamorous" and "garden shed". Not very often at all. But despite that I'm going to admit that I t...

Everyone knows that GPUs are wonderful things that enable us to create stunning graphical effects through APIs such as OpenGL ES, but what else can we do with them? My good friend Borgar Ljosland suggested that Augmented Reality could be one of the next Big Things in his blog and while it's fun to argue with Vikings, he could well be right. Let's look into this a bit closer...

It is said that the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their correct names. If so, in the computing industry we are often not very wise… GPGPU (General Purpose Computing on Graphics Processing Units) has always seemed to me to be misnamed, since the computing that works best on GPUs is not really ver...

3 月 26 日，ARM 将精英合作伙伴汇聚一堂，召开了为期一天的研讨会，着重讨论影响家用设计产品的关键要素。来自所有主要 ODM 和 SOC 供应商的 200 多名与会者参加了本次家用产品研讨会 (Home Seminar)。本次研讨会涉及的主题包括：互联网访问和多媒体时代的来临、软件 重用模型、在非移动应用中利用移动解决方案、强调开源环境和多种 ARM 生态系统。演示划分为 ARM 和以下合作伙伴两大部分，内容涵盖从运营商到 SOC 及...

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