Tech Symposia 2016 – Shanghai keynotes

The first of this year’s ARM® Tech Symposia kicked off this morning on a rather damp day in Shanghai. With the rain coming down outside it was a perfect opportunity to check out our latest demos before convening in the ballroom for the first of the day’s presentations. Allen Wu, EVP and President of ARM China welcomed us to the event and discussed ARM’s commitment to supporting the development of China’s technology ecosystem. He then handed over to Ian Ferguson, VP Worldwide Marketing, for a deeper look at what we can expect from this year’s events and the future of ARM and our partners under our new umbrella, the Softbank Group. Ian talked about the opportunities this collaboration has provided for the future of automation and IoT technology as well as stressing the importance of continuity under this new model and ARM’s commitment to ensuring business as usual for all our partners and colleagues.

In terms of the opportunities for automation and IoT technology, China is ahead of the game and taking the lead in accelerating ARM based server infrastructure. For example, parking spaces at the new Disneyland Shanghai have been enabled by Huawei for smart monitoring and reporting of capacity and usage patterns. This accelerated adoption will support the faster deployment of IoT based systems, the importance of this can be seen in a study by the EIU IoT Business Index which showed that in 2013 around 90% of businesses surveyed expected to be using IoT in 2016. Now, 75% of those are indeed seeing the impact of the IoT revolution on their business, with key focuses around security, cost and establishing a sufficient knowledge base to truly enable the industry’s growth.

Ian discussed security requirements in the context of recent incidents such as the covert deployment of thousands of DVRs to simultaneously attack DNS servers, bringing down huge sites like Twitter and Spotify whilst appearing to continue functioning as normal. Silent attacks such as this highlight the need for security technologies like ARM’s TrustZone® in protecting both content and devices. Security is not the only concern for a connected world, with a strong ecosystem required to facilitate sustainable growth. China’s ecosystem is not the same as that seen in the US, with initiatives like OPNFV providing a shift from proprietary hardware to open source software allowing our China partners to compete on a global scale. The distribution of the ARM powered BBC MicroBit to UK schoolchildren can be expanded to the Chinese education system to grow the next generation of programmers with open source platforms, software and specifications.

We’re seeing developments too in automated vehicles. Whilst widespread use may still be a way off, with safety critical implications under careful consideration, recently in the US a beer truck successfully travelled 120 miles to deliver its important cargo without a driver in sight. Drones too are becoming more valuable, with Amazon trialling them for deliveries in the air near our offices in Cambridge. These too require additional layers of technology to sustain their use. It’s not enough to be able to use GPS to program their destination, they need computer vision combined with machine learning in order to assess and avoid hazards, connectivity for real time updates and safety critical mechanisms to ensure security and protection for both content and consumer. Healthcare, too, is beginning to benefit from advances in IoT based applications and microprocessors, with innovative early detection initiatives emerging to detect cancer cells through smell sensors to ensure early treatment. Elsewhere, sound sensors on streetlights in dangerous areas can immediately alert police to gunfire in the vicinity without the delay of waiting for an emergency call from a member of the public. With such a vast range of applications for connected devices and automation, it’s clear that the IoT revolution really is upon us and it’s great to see the huge leaps we and our partners are taking in making this happen.

Next up was the product keynote, with Noel Hurley, VP & GM of the Business Segments Group, discussing the rapid uptake of ARM’s latest Premium Mobile products, Cortex®-A53 CPU and Mali™-G71 GPU, launched in May 2016. With these products starting to appear in devices it’s great to see the annual product launch cycle has been able to benefit our partners’ time to market. The product keynote was a key milestone for us in the Mali multimedia and graphics team, with Noel announcing the exciting launch of not one, but two new products into the ARM Mali Multimedia Suite. First up was the Mali-V61 video processor (VPU), which might be familiar to some of you as it was previewed earlier this year under the codename Egil. Now fully fledged, our brand new video processor boasts better than ever scalability and configurability as well as high quality VP9 encode and vast improvements to HEVC encode. Designed to support video across all device types and tiers from smartphones and drones, to cameras, Mali-V61 is looking to be the go-to IP for next gen video apps.

Hot on the heels of the Mali-V61 VPU was the Mali-G51 GPU, the first mainstream GPU to be built on our exciting new Bifrost architecture. Launched earlier this year with the Mali-G71 high performance GPU, Bifrost has undergone some specialized optimizations in order to perfectly balance quality graphics performance with area and energy efficiency to allow Mali-G51 to meet the needs of the mainstream device market. Not only is VR reaching the mainstream in areas like Virtual Spaces, but the development of new APIs like Khronos’ Vulkan, as well as ever-growing screen resolutions, have been instrumental in creating the need for high performance graphics capability within a mainstream silicon budget.

Not to be forgotten was the recent acquisition of Apical which allowed us to add computer vision and assertive camera and display technologies to our Imaging and Vision portfolio. Read more about the importance of Computer Vision to the future of technology here. Back on to IoT, Noel filled us in on the recent launch of the IoT subsystem block enabling a fast, secure route all the way from chip to cloud. nandannayampally 's blog explains why this was such a significant area of focus for us and what it brings to the IoT environment.

The next stop on the Tech Symposia tour takes us to Beijing where I’ll be bringing you all the highlights from the more technical presentations across the three streams of Next generation processing, Smart embedded & IoT and Intelligent implementation and infrastructure. See you there!