Welcome to sunny Shenzhen for the third and final day of the China leg of ARM Tech Symposia 2016. There’s a very different feel to this city from the moment you leave the airport. Just a few short decades ago this was a sleepy little fishing village and the speed of growth to today’s sprawling metropolis of shining skyscrapers with LED displays emblazoned across their sides gives an impression of youthful urgency. The Ritz Carlton plays host to us today, with flashing lights and Hollywood soundtrack all the familiar faces were welcomed back to the stage to share their knowledge with a new set of partners and developers.
Asked for his impressions of this year’s ARM Tech Symposia events, VP Worldwide Marketing, Ian Ferguson (now famous for his keynote describing IoT applications for watering his walnuts), said ‘China is such an important market for ARM and its ecosystem. Our ongoing commitment to bringing experts from across our company and the ecosystem, helps equip local companies to develop compelling new products that benefit us all.’ It’s certainly true that the innovation and progression of the Chinese technology industry is pushing forward many of the solutions we’ll all come to rely on in the future. It seems every seat is filled with bright, talented people keen to take emerging technologies to a broader marketplace.
For those of us lucky enough to attend all three events it’s been a fantastic opportunity to see talks across all three technical tracks, broadening our own learning along with our partners and colleagues. This learning experience is one of the key aims of the event, with Noel Hurley, GM of Business Segments Group, saying: ‘these events are so well attended and organised (well done to the team!) it’s really encouraging to see all these engineers keen to understand what we are doing and how they can design with ARM technology’. The turnout has indeed been great, with a vast variety of attendees and speakers from all over the world, coming together to share their experience.
Having focused on graphics and VR at previous events today I had the chance to join Judd Heape, from our newly created Imaging and Vision Group, for his talk on the Computer Vision products which joined ARM’s portfolio following the acquisition of Apical earlier this year. Many people are already feeling the benefits of assertive display technologies without even being aware of it. This uses pixel by pixel tone mapping to adjust specific areas of an image to allow you to see greater contrast and detail on the screen of your phone, even in bright conditions. Not only does this technology improve the viewing quality of your images but can also save between 20 and 50% power consumption depending on your settings. This technology is already working silently in millions of devices and we are now in a position to leverage its full potential for a greater range of consumers, as well as extending it with the latest versions of this product which can automatically remaster High Dynamic Range (HDR) content to be viewed on mobile displays. Also explained were the Assertive Camera product, enabling HDR to improve image capture quality, and a Geometric Distortion Engine which can effectively ‘unravel’ fish eye style images into standard perspective.
Judd explained that the importance of imaging doesn't stop at capturing and displaying images but now extends to understanding the content of those images. Smart, low power technologies like ARM's Computer Vision engine, which is enabling instant facial recognition and behavior mapping across large groups of people, will also start to change the way we work. Security and safety can be much improved by utilizing this technology to assess overcrowding in transport, for example, and address it before it becomes a danger to commuters. It can also improve personal video content by allowing you to focus specifically on your friends or family members as they play football, or run a marathon for example.
Demos, too, are adding value to these events. With dedicated team members and partners on hand to help you try everything from VR to drones, even the coffee breaks can be hugely informative.
Having seen just a small proportion of the fantastic presentations across these events I’m in awe of the wealth of potential at our fingertips and am already looking forward to next year’s events to see what one more year of innovation will bring. For those of you lucky enough to join the team at the upcoming events in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and India, there’s a lot to look forward to!