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ARM Community: SoC Design - ARM Community

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The Server in Your Hand - and the three new interfaces inside it

Posted by Guest Partner Blog,
09 May 2013
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Do you love your smartphone? Is your tablet the best computer you’ve ever owned? If you’re like me, and nearly a billion other folks on the plant, the answer is a passionate YES! The evidence is everywhere: industry forecasts, customer showrooms, and your own most recent techno-philosophy hallway debate.

Given that emotion, you may be surprised to hear that everything you love about your smart device is going to get better – much better. In fact, you’ll soon have the power of a server in your hand.

The unexpected reason for this lies not in semiconductor technology, but in the adoption of 3 arcane chip interfaces. These interfaces are the keys to a new mobile device architecture with PC-like speed and mobile-friendly battery life. The interfaces are:
ARM’s AMBA® 4 AXI Coherency Extensions (...

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ARM Cortex-A50 Processor Series Wins ‘Product of the Year’ Award

Posted by Brian Jeff,
08 February 2013
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More than 3400 product announcements. 700 applications. Less than 20 winners selected for 2012.

It was a great honor for the ARM® Cortex™-A57 and A53 processors based on the ARMv8 architecture to receive a prestigious “Product of the Year” award from Electronic Products Magazine. Several dozen ARM employees looked on as Electronic Products’ West Coast editor Jim Harrison presented this award to Simon Segars, president of ARM, this week at ARM’s San Jose office. During his presentation Jim discussed how each year, the magazine’s editors review thousands of new products, and he described the heated discussions to determine winners based on their contribution to technology advancement and innovative design, in addition to success in price and performance.

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This honor really confirms the positive feedback we have received from our Partners across the ARM ecosystem. The Cortex-A50 processor series is enabling a...

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Farming for 2015 Superphones and Supertablets

Posted by John Heinlein,
31 January 2013
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Farming and Superphones you ask? Trust me, there’s a link.

Farmers think and plan very carefully to invest in their future. A farmer who makes the wrong planting decision, waters incorrectly, or improperly manages his fields can lose a crop cycle. So a farmer must anticipate future trends in crop prices, weather patterns, seed availability and plant accordingly. As a result, a farmer plants his seeds very deliberately with the intention of reaping rewards in the next harvest if he planned and invested correctly.

Now, I get to the semiconductor industry connection.

Here, investment in technology today will bear fruit several years into the future.

ARM has been making those investments in advanced implementation technologies for years. Working with partners such as GLOBALFOUNDRIES, IBM and Samsung, we made aggressive, early investments in silicon experimentation, full chip implementation proof points, and early Physical IP...

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Do we really need another IT certification?

Posted by David Abreu,
09 October 2012
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Much has been said about the value of work experience over certifications in the IT industry. Sure, certifications can be used by hiring managers to distinguish between similar job applicants, and they can certainly help job seekers stand out from the crowd in a competitive job market. But all other things being equal, wouldn't most hiring managers pick an experienced applicant without certifications, over an inexperienced one with certifications? Couldn't hiring managers develop their own list of technical questions to quiz prospective employees with?

So why are ARM launching a new IT certification called the ARM Accredited Engineer Program?

1. The computing industry is changing…fast

There is a shift taking place in our incredibly dynamic industry: computing is going mobile. There has been a significant migration away from power-hungry desktop and laptop platforms towards much lighter, smaller and power-efficient mobile computing platforms. With a strong heritage in the mobile phone industry, ARM has been well placed to gain significant traction in the mobile computing market in thi...

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An Advanced Timing Sign-off Methodology for the SoC Design Ecosystem

Posted by Guest Partner Blog,
11 September 2012
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The System-on-a-Chip (SoC) ecosystem spans the gamut of designs from high-end servers to low-power mobile consumer segments. A large and heterogeneous set of players (foundries, IP vendors, SoC integrators, etc.) has a stake in fostering the success of the ecosystem model. While the integrated device manufacturer (IDM) model has undeniable value in terms of bringing to bear large resources in tackling technology barriers, one could argue that the rapid-fire smartphone revolution we have experienced in the last five years owes in large part to the broad-based innovation enabled by the SoC ecosystem model. This blog examines how the changing dynamics of SoCs are driving changes in verification requirements, tools and flows and thereby changing the timing sign-off paradigm.

ARM should be applauded for the significant role it has played in bootstrapping and further enabling the SoC ecosystem model. By licensing its processor and digital IP instead of manufacturing its own chips, ARM has freed its partners to aggressively build and refine their products without being reliant on general purpose devices or rigid form factors. And it did not hurt that ARM’s advantage in the ...

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The Next Big Thing: From the Newton to Smartphone... to a Smartchip Implant?

Posted by Leon Chang,
01 May 2012
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Just last week while at a friend’s home, I noticed an interesting device from the past – an Apple Newton, circa mid-1990s – a device way ahead of its time. An early personal digital assistant (PDA) based on the 32-bit ARM 610 processor on 1.2um CMOS process, running at 20-33Mhz with battery life of over 30 hours of continuous use. There’s still quite a following on this extraordinary device that even featured handwriting recognition.

Fast forward to present day. Now, we have the latest smartphones – mobile computing platforms featuring a PDA, camera, GPS, WiFi, web browser, touchscreen and of course, cell phone. The typical advanced smartphone is based on the ARM® CortexTM-A9 processor core on 45nm to 28nm process technologies, running at or greater than 1GHz with limited battery life of approximately 10 hours max.

Whoa …..so what happened to the battery life?? Granted there are phenomenally greater features and performance, at the cost of power, i.e. 40x in performance from the Newton but one-third ...

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Spreading the Multicore Message 'Down Under'

Posted by John Goodacre,
20 March 2012
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ARM is heading to Multicore World 2012 to discuss ARM MPCore solutions and grow the development ecosystem in New Zealand.

If you were to ask most people what New Zealand is famous for, you’d probably hear it has more sheep than people, suggesting that the most that small country down-under can offer is open spaces and woolly clothing – how wrong.

Later this month, the balance will be put a little out of shape, starting on the 27th March for two days a number of international speakers and researchers and I will be taking time to specifically travel to New Zealand to address and participate within their growing community of businesses and technology innovators addressing the international challenge of multicore at Multicore World 2012.

ARM today has very little of its development ecosystem located in the southern hemisphere, however this opportunity to inform the community about the ARM MPCore solutions and vision was too good to be missed. As such, I will be travelling fr...

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将大小计算引擎完美地整合在-起 - ARM Cortex-A7

Posted by Brian Jeff,
17 November 2011
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今天，ARM Cortex-A7 的隆重推出…标志着 big.Little 处理架构的最终实现！

我驾驶着一辆节能型的本田飞度行驶在 20 英里的市区上班途中。有时我会突发奇想，希望在自己的座驾上安装一个更快的引擎，但大部分时间我还是对自己驾驶的节能车辆感到很满意。但我必须承认我曾抗拒换一辆经济型轿车；我时常梦想自己拥有像保时捷或宝马车那样的性能，但只希望在驾车的小部分时间里拥有这种卓越的性能。如果我能驾驶一辆平均能效保持在四缸引擎范围内，而在需要最高性能的片刻可迅速切换到高性能的涡轮增压式 V8 引擎汽车，那该有多好啊？如果平均燃油能效接近于 4 缸引擎，而最高性能接近于涡轮增压式 V8 引擎的性能，会怎样？
 ...

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Energy Efficiency and Air Conditioning - Part 2: ARM Cortex-A7

Posted by Ashley Stevens,
25 October 2011
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ARM Cortex-A7 processor…It's all about right-sized equipment.
In Part 1 of this blog we saw how right-sizing of air conditioning is vitally important because it performs three different functions simultaneously: Cooling, dehumidification and ventilation. Increases in efficiency could be obtained by separating out these three functions and optimizing them independently. As we saw last time, pumping air through ducts is inefficient due to the wasted pumping energy. You could use a hydronic system like a traditional underfloor heating system as is common in northern Europe, but with cooling in the ceiling as well as heating in the floor. Pumping water is a more efficient way to move energy than air. Even though the water pipe is physically smaller than an air duct, in terms of thermal energy transfer capacity it's a fatter pipe. But this wouldn't dehumidify or ventilate, so you'd still need a very small A/C system with air ducts to provide these functions. Duct size and pumping losses would be much lower than a pure ducted central air system though...

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Combining large and small compute engines - ARM Cortex-A7

Posted by Brian Jeff,
19 October 2011
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Today the ARM Cortex-A7 processor was announced…the power of big.Little processing is finally realized!

I drive a Honda Fit, mainly for the fuel efficiency, on a 20 mile city street commute. Sometimes I wish my car had a faster engine, but most of the time I’m happy to drive for high gas mileage. But I have to say I was a reluctant convert to economy cars; I often find myself longing for the performance of a Porsche or BMW, but I only really want that performance a small percentage of the time I’m driving. Wouldn’t it be great if it were possible to drive a car with the average efficiency of a 4-cylinder engine, a car that could switch to a high performance of a turbocharged V8 engine for the small percentage of time you actually wanted peak performance? What if the average fuel economy was closer to the 4-cylinder and the peak performance was closer to that of the turbo V8?

...

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Hot Chips Takes a Walk Down Memory Lane - Part 1

Posted by Simon Segars,
31 August 2011
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Recently I gave a keynote presentation at the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University entitled “ARM Processor Evolution: Bringing High Performance to Mobile Devices”. In my talk I covered three main topics. First, how computing has evolved over the last 30 years from its desk bound origins to the ultra mobile world we know today. Second I talked about ARM’s role in that evolution and some of our early experiences of mobile devices. Finally, I spoke about some of the challenges I see ahead of us. In this blog I will give a recap of my presentation. Here in part 1 I’ll cover the history, and in part 2 look to the future.

Back to the 80’s
There is no doubt that personal computing has come a long way in the last 30 years. In my presentation I started by looking at the leading mobile devices from the early 80’s, namely the Osborne 1 and the Motorola DynaTAC. Launched in 1981, the Osborne 1 is widely recognized as the first portable computer. Weighing in at a solid 24.5lbs, it would be a brave man who carried that on a round-the-world business trip, esp...

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Mainstream Technologies Fuel the Internet of Things Revolution

Posted by Raviraj Mahatme,
24 August 2011
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There is an old saying that no matter where you are in the world you are never more than three feet away from a spider. I can’t tell you if this is true, although my wife hopes it isn’t. However it is probably a fact of life that you are never more than three feet away from a silicon chip manufactured on a mainstream technology process (250nm-90nm). Take a look around you right now. The computer screen you are reading this blog on is driven by display drivers manufactured on a mainstream technology node. That mobile phone you just used has several chips manufactured on mainstream nodes for battery management, power control and display functions. Your GPS device, tablet, coffee maker, microwave oven, PMP, video game player, and even the toys your kids are playing with are all powered by mainstream technology. As more of these products incorporate ARM-based microcontroller and microprocessors combined with wireless technology the application goes beyond an internet of ...

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Elba - Bringing it all together

Posted by John Goodacre,
13 July 2011
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In the previous three blogs (Parts 1, 2 and 3) I’ve outlined the background and key decisions involved in the development and implementation of the Elba testchip. Now we’ll look at the final steps taken to bring Elba to life.

As our understanding of the various components broadened, the actual SoC architecture design activity then knew the details it needed in order finalize the design. We knew we had two Cortex-A9 macros, a Mali GPU and the various other components, but not too much about how we would best plug them together. Since we also wanted to investigate system level power management, many of the large system components were also placed into their own independent power domains. The layout of the design also became rather ...

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Elba Processor Power Management

Posted by John Goodacre,
11 July 2011
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Having chosen the optimal implementation, as described in the previous blog, we now turned our attention to power management.

Simulations of Elba at this point of the program were starting to supply some rather noticeable power levels for the processor, especially at the design corner we were most familiar with. The worst case design corner is a statistical point across the variations that you could potentially see from a silicon process at a temperature that is assumed to not exist. Remember, ARM's primary market was mobile devices, so for these devices a manufacturer wanted to know that every chip delivered from the fab would achieve the defined performance. So speed would always be defined by the statistically slowest piece of silicon, and the power would be defined by the statistically fastest and hottest piece of silicon – neither of which would ever exist in reality, but allowed the manufacturer to maximise device yield without testing each part for its performance. You may know that around 1 billion phones were sold last year – and that would be a lot of cost to ‘speed-bin’ parts across that market.

There are various ways to speed-bin a SoC, but basically the two main o...

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ARM DAC Review

Posted by Simon Segars,
06 July 2011
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The 48th DAC was held in San Diego this year and whenever DAC is not in Silicon Valley there is always a concern about how many people are going to show up. Fortunately the sun shone on San Diego and there seemed to be a good number of people in attendance.

This year, for only the second time in history, there was an ARM booth at DAC. In previous years we have shown demos within our partners’ booths but this year we had our own space as well as working with our partners as usual. One of the messages we were promoting at DAC the need for a complete system solution approach to design, as opposed a collection of components designed in isolation of each other. We call this Smarter Systems Solutions and John Heinlein gave a presentation on this subject on the Chip Estimate booth. During DAC, ARM also ...

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"Wouldn't it be interesting if we..." - Giving Birth to 'Elba'

Posted by John Goodacre,
05 July 2011
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“Wouldn’t it be interesting if we....” That’s the way many step changes have started in ARM. In the next four blogs I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you about just one of those, we called it “The Elba Program”. The Elba program is just coming to its end, but its effect is starting to be seen in various places across the web as new markets and devices are starting to appear.

First, a very basic history lesson. ARM processors really took off as the processor that powered the first mobile phones. Phones as I’m sure you know need to be turned on to receive a call, and until more recently most calls were fairly short in comparison to the time a phone sat in what was called standby mode. This requirement quickly became the dominant characteristic for embedded processors and drove an entire branch of the semiconductor industry to look at manufacturing devices that consumed as little energy as possible when in standby at the cost of higher energy consumption when active. At the fabrication level, this technology gained a geometry label “LP” (low power), to differentiate it from the “G” (generic) process that was used by the more general purpose microprocessors.
...

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Upgrading Your Verification For Cache Coherency With Jasper!

Posted by Guest Partner Blog,
06 June 2011
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Are you using a mobile device? Chances are you’re probably reading this blog post on one. You’re also probably reading this with the confidence that your device is doing what you intend it to do. As consumers, we place a lot of demands on not only our mobile devices but also the rest of our personal electronics. We want them to perform all sorts of tasks efficiently, accurately, and with minimal power consumption. As an engineer, you’re aware of the complex embedded SoC’s used in your device to make sure that it does what’s intended. Today’s embedded SoC’s are high performance, heterogeneous, and multi-processing systems.

In the future, most of these embedded SoC’s are likely to contain multiple caches that share a single memory resource. At a high level, cache coherency means that two caches cannot have same cache line in a dirty state and that if a cache contains a cache line in a unique state, that line must not be in another cache. In addition, at least one transaction must always be able make forward progress (no deadlock.) To prevent these cache coherency issues, ARM has included cache coherence extensions in their AMBA 4 protocol specification.

While this is a tremendou...

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