Chinese Version 中文版：高端移动用户体验优选，ARM优质IP组合
The innovation of smartphone is never ending and will continue to evolve over the time. 5 years ago when people talked about smartphone, touch interface was new to many end users and it was just about to take off displacing QWERTY keyboard. Today, nobody care about touch UI because it is nearly impossible to find a smartphone without touch interface. What we see today is voice driven input interface and gesture recognition applications are being adopted by more and more people, thanks to higher processor performance, higher cellular data rate, and better voice recognition algorithms. All of those technological breakthroughs make it possible to carry out complicated data acquisition and analysis and on the device or in the cloud. Few years ago when the mobile display is less than HD (high-resolution), people can only do simple UI operation or chat online with text messages. Today, as HD or Full HD display has become the basic smartphone specification, HD content streaming or messaging with text, images, voice, and videos are things people do when they take bus to work. Today, as more and more high-end mobile devices are equipped with 4K display or retina display, we can expect to see UHD (ultra-HD) content streaming or broadcasting over cellular networks from studios. The apps, which is really one of the enzymes to ignite the smartphone revolution, will evolve from gimmicky branded apps and games, to a unique personalized mobile services leveraging location, context, usage behavior, and data. The buzz word of contexture awareness, console gaming on mobile devices, mobile payment, are within the reach.
The redefined premium user experience is not possible without the technological breakthrough. The heart of the smartphone innovation includes the CPU, GPU, modem and connectivity, video codec, peripherals, etc., just to name a few. Over the past 5 years, it is observed that the CPU performance has enhanced 36x, while the GPU performance improvement is 40-folds and video codec complexity has increased by 34 times. With the LTE deployment and new techniques in Wi-Fi, the cellular and connectivity data rate has increased by 40 times. The demand of memory bandwidth and capacity has also increased by 16 times.
ARM as the leader in the mobile industry, has provided high performance high efficiency IP to silicon partners to fulfill ever increasing user demand and unprecedented premium user experience. On Feb 4th in Beijing ARM has announced the following IP suites for premium IP user experience:
Cortex-A72 is ARM’s highest performance Cortex-A 64-bit processor as of today. Together with advanced process manufacturing technologies moving from 28nm in 2014, to 20nm in 2015, and to 16FinFET in 2016, Cortex-A72 in 2016 provides 3.5x performance uplift from Cortex-A15 in 2014 in the same smartphone power envelope. On the energy efficiency side, Cortex-A72 device in 2016 is expected to be 75% less energy consumption for the same workload as compared to Cortex-A15 devices in 2014. With ARM’s big.LITTLE technology, Cortex-A72 as the big core with power efficiency Cortex-A53 as little core can provide additional 40%-60% power reduction on average across multiple workloads. The big.LITTLE solution with Cortex-A72 also provides compelling scalable solutions for high-end larger screen mobile devices that require more compute in smaller footprint with less power.
As slimmer and cooler form factors are critical for consumers’ eyes in high-end smartphone devices, Coretx-A72’s better energy efficiency helps device makers to design sleeker and cooler device appearance, thus innovative, non-conventional, fashion devices can be expected in near term.
While CPU such as Cortex-A72 provides high computing capabilities with high efficiency, consumers will not be able to experience superior visual experience with Mali GPU. The newly introduced Mali-T880, as compared to its predecessor Mali-T760 announced in 2014, provides 1.8X better performance and 40% less energy consumption for the same workloads. Complemented with Mali-V550 video codec and Mali-DP550 display processors, ARM Mali enables superior system level benefits and brings advanced gaming and console-like user experience to mobile consumers.
Besides Cortex-A72 and Mali-T880, the premium user experience cannot be achieved without high performance and high efficiency highway system that connects multiple engines and transports data within the system promptly and efficiently. ARM CoreLink CCI-500 delivers as much as twice peak system bandwidth compered to CoreLink CCI-400, CCI-500 also delivers additional 35% memory performance uplift relative to Cortex-A72 with CoreLink CCI-400. With the peak bandwidth delivered by CoreLink CCI-500, 4K display and beyond can be realized. As mobile system becoming more complicated and can varying a lot with respect of CPU cores, GPU cores, display processor capabilities, etc., CoreLink CCI-500 is highly configurable according to system configuration and is scalable to support coherent accelerators and enhance big.LITTLE integration.
Without doubt process manufacturing technology is one of the key factors that drive mobile technologies moving forward and keep setting new bars. Today in ARM’s Premium IP suite announcement, ARM’s POP IP for TSMC 16FinFET is also announced alongside with Cortex-A72, Mali-T880, and CoreLink CCI-500. As advanced process manufacturing technology keep shrinking in nanometer scale, the cost barrier and technology barrier become higher and some silicon partners with limited resources may face more challenges when moving into more sophisticated design. ARM’s POP IP for TSMC 16FinFET greatly reduce barrier for silicon partners so they can focus on their system innovation. ARM’s POP IP for TSMC 16FinFET can achieve 2x power efficiency over 28nm implementation, and enables Cortex-A72 implementation up to 2.5 GHz, maximizing performance and efficiency.
Peter Hutton, EVP and President Product Groups
In the Premium IP suite announcement on 2/4 in Beijing, besides ARM’s executives there are partners from HiSilicon's Daniel Diao, MediaTek's Andrew Chang, and TSMC’s Peter Chen to jointly announce the premium IP suite for next generation premium user experience.
Pete Hutton, EVP and President Product Groups, and Noel Hurley, ARM General Manager of CPU, firstly welcome journalists and reporters and partners.
Besides the technical aspect of announced IP suite, Pete and Noel also shared ARM’s view on premium mobile user experience. From ARM’s view, it is observed that the massive increase in CPU and GPU performance, boosts in connectivity, combined with software innovations in usability and new business models have changed our mobile experience. For example, console gaming experience in mobile device will soon be realized and in a few years maybe people will say mobile gaming quality in console gaming. Multicasting and UHD content streaming at anywhere, anytime are becoming reality. Not only for entertainment, now people can edit office documents such as powerpoint or word, do professional tasks such as CAD mechanical design with their mobile devices and share to their colleague with wireless connections. People can take photos and transforms the photo to a 3D model on a mobile device, and then make a physical toddler or a figure of his/her favorite Disney movie with 3D printer – this is new user experience about content creation, it is no longer limited to digital document creation. Delivering these new user experiences depends upon continued innovation in the mobile device and the SoC that powers it.
Partners such as HiSilicon, MediaTek, and TSMC also shared their views on premium mobile user experience. The recorded sales number in Nov. 11th 1111 光棍節 (China Single Day) showed the red-hot internet booming in China economy, it also indicates with huge mobile traffic and online shopping behavior the mass market requires more performance , more fashionable, slimmer, sleeker and longer-lasting mobile device for unprecedented user experience. And ARM’s new premium IP suite will be the engine to drive the premium user experience in 2016 and 2017. The consumers will be able to enjoy the premium user experience in near future.
In the end of the announcement ARM execs and partners together hold the signage boards of Cortex-A72, Mali-T880, CoreLink-CCI 500, and POP IP for TSMC 16FinFET for joint announcement of premium IP suite.
From left:ARM Mark Dickinson, Hisilicon's Daniel Diao,ARM petehutton, TSMC’s Peter Chen, ARM Allen Wu, MediaTek, Andrew Chang, ARM Noel Hurley
From left: ARM Mark Dickinson, HiSilicon’s Daniel Diao ,ARM Pete Hutton, ARM Allen Wu, TSMC’s Peter Chen, Mediatek Andrew Chang, ARM Noel Hurley