Tag: arm

ARM buys OffSpark

Posted on February 9, 2015 by - News

lightningBritish chip designer ARM has bought Dutch firm Offspark, which is an open source security software outfit.

It is all part of ARM’s cunning plan to make chips for the internet of things.  It seems that the move by Intel to buy McAfee is starting to make some sense and ARM is seeing the wisdom of having inhouse security software.

Offspark’s PolarSSL technology is designed for sensor modules, communication modules and smartphones.

ARM said buying the group would add its security and software cryptography to its IoT platform, designed to link billions of devices online.

It is not clear how much ARM paid for the security outfit. ARM has promised that the  technology will remain open source and will be made available to developers for commercial use.

It complements ARM’s Cryptobox technology of mbed OS that enables secure execution and storage.

Apparently ARM is to  release mbed OS under an Apache 2.0 licence which will include mbed TLS, Thread, and other key technologies toward the end of 2015.

The release of mbed TLS 1.3.10 is now available under GPL and to existing PolarSSL customers on polarssl.org.

 

ARM shows off new mobile chip

Posted on February 4, 2015 by - News

arm-wrestlingBritish chip designer ARM Holdings unveiled a new processor aimed at better computing performance and beefed-up graphics for smartphones and tablets.

We will not see the new Cortex-A72 processor hit the streets until next year but it is being touted as saving ARM’s bacon.

Investors are concerned about lower royalty rates for ARM as growth in the smartphone market shifts to China, where consumers typically buy devices priced at $200 or less, compared with more than $600 in the United States.

ARM licenses its processor technology to other semiconductor companies and receives its cash based on the selling prices of chips shipped by its partners.

On the technical side,  ARM claims the new processor has 3.5 times the performance of comparable chips from 2014.

The chip design will also deliver a 75 percent reduction in energy use, helping reduce battery drain on smartphones, they claimed.

However, most of the advances depend on contract manufacturers like TSMC getting its 16nm process technology to higher yields.

Nandan Nayampally, ARM’s vice president of marketing, said with the Cortex-A72’s increased computing horsepower, smartphones and tablets will be able to handle complex computing like voice analysis without having to connect to the Internet.

Many compute-heavy tasks on smartphones today are handled remotely in data centres owned by Internet heavyweights like Amazon, Google and Facebook In instead of by the smartphone’s processor, with results instantly sent to the device.

Ten companies have licensed the new technology, including China’s Rockchip and Taiwan’s MediaTek, ARM said.

Raspberry Pi 2 goes on sale

Posted on February 2, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-02-02 at 14.26.35The people who make popular do-it-yourself circuit board said that they’ve released a new version of the device.
The Raspberry Pi 2 sells for $35 – the same price as before, but now comes with a 900MHz quad core ARM Cortex A7 CPU, 1GB of SDRAM, and retains compatibility with the Raspberry Pi 1.
The board, popular with schools and enthusiasts can run all ARM GNU/Linux distributions as well as Microsoft Windows 10  – when it comes out.
The company said that Broadcom has created a new system on a chip BCM2836 for the device, which includes the 900MHz ARM chip – meaning there’s no upgrade difficulties.
The company said that it has worked with Microsoft over the last 10 months to prepare for the arrival of Windows 10.  The Raspberry Pi 2 compatible version of Windows 10 won’t cost anything to manufacturers.

 

Windows 10: the mess begins

Posted on January 27, 2015 by - News

windows-10-technical-preview-turquoiseMicrosoft appears to have further muddied the waters with its announcements about Windows 10 last week.
The new version of Windows, which no one really expects to be available until September this year at the earliest, is supposed to run on all sorts of different hardware platforms.
But, according to veteran expert Mary Jo Foley over at ZD Net, you might need a degree in both physics and marketing to try and make any sense of what’s in store for millions of people later this year.
She writes that the different SKUs – stock keeping units come in a plethora of shapes and sizes.
For example, the preview edition available to test now is Windows 10 desktop that will run on Intel based devices.
But the February version will be Windows 10 mobile and that’s intended to run on phones based on ARM chips.
There are other versions of Windows 10 intended for different kinds of devices.
You can read more about what Mary Jo has to say, here.
Our take on this is that all Microsoft will do is persuade its enterprise customers and everyone else that it is deeply confused about the future.
Some sources estimate that as many as 10 percent of people that use Windows are still using Windows XP.  That’s because they failed to be convinced it was worth moving to Vista, Windows 7, or the widely disrespected Windows 8.1.

Intel earnings Jump: it’s memory bundling

Posted on January 16, 2015 by - News

Intel Q4_14_Results

Intel released its fourth quarter 2014 results yesterday afternoon with income jumping 39 percent on improved demand for personal computer and server system chips. The company allowed that it is  expecting a somewhat flat first quarter for 2015 which led shares 1.9% lower in after-hours trading. The PC Client Group’s earnings improved by three percent while the Data Centre Group’s earnings improved by 25 percent. Overall revenue increased by six percent  year-on-year and gross profit margin exceeded 65 percent.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected per-share earnings of 66 cents and revenue of $14.71 billion.

For the current first quarter, Intel projected revenue between $13.2 billion and $14.2 billion and gross margin of 60 percent, plus or minus a couple percentage points. Analysts, on average, were expecting revenue of $13.76 billion and gross margin of 61.2 percent, according to Reuters.

For the year, Intel projected revenue to rise by a mid-single digits percentage rate and achieve a gross margin of 62% of revenue, plus or minus a couple percentage points. Analysts, on average, were expecting revenue to rise 4% and gross margin of 63.4%, according to Reuters.

PC Client Group Improves

Intel’s integral attachment to the PC market greatly affected earnings as the PC market growth slowed and consumer market demand was satisfied with less costly tablets and high capacity smartphones. The uptick in PC demand last spring has had a positive effect on earnings and aided in the company’s turnaround effort to become “the” dominant supplier in the mobile market. With Intel’s 14 nm manufacturing muscle Brian Krzanich is now “loaded for ARM” vowing to place 40 million Intel chips into tablets now dominated by ARM Holdings PLC.

3D 256 Gb NAND-Flash Bundling?

No mention was made by Intel of its  recently announced 3D 256 Gb NAND-Flash devices. Intel has what can only be called an obsession with its ability to control the memory side of the sales equation without owning any of the fixed assets to produce it.

Analysts have been wondering why Micron was not more upbeat on the announcement; it is,  after all the controlling partner in Intel-Micron Flash Technologies, Inc. (IMFT). Sources indicate that Intel will most likely begin bundling Processors and Memory kits with Intel claiming the lion’s share of margin leaving Micron to its own pursuits with its share of output.

Last but Not Least

The Data Centre Group is rumoured to be the earnings darling of the coming quarters with sources indicating market moving announcements over the first half of 2015. Those announcements concern Intel’s SDN for Cloud Computing efforts…

 

 

 

Nvidia and AMD stuffed by TSMC’s Apple friendship

Posted on January 7, 2015 by - News

two-applesNvidia and AMD have had their move to 16nm and 20nm designs hampered by the limited capacity of both nodes at manufacturer TSMC.

According to WCCFTech.com,  AMD GPUs are made by TSMC as are Nvidia’s chips.  But it looks like all TSMC’s capacity has been sucked up by Apple and Samsung.

This is hard on Nvidia which already had to make the chips in its GTX 980 and 970 cards, using the 28nm process instead of the 20nm it wanted. Nvidia thought it was better to skip 20nm and go straight to 16nm for future designs.

AMD wanted to drop from 28nm to 20nm for its new GPUs but hit the same capacity issue which stuffed up the delivery of AMD’s 20nm R9 300 series graphics cards. We expected these in February and March of this year but now they are at least two months behind.

AMD’s Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster has warned that there would be 20nm and 28nm products in 2015 but no 14nm or 16nm products until 2016.

And the reason is because Apple’s 16nm A9 chip, which is being made by TSMC has priority and what is left is being taken by Samsung which outsources a lot of work to TSMC.

AMD and Nvidia are stuffed. The only other manufacturer with spare 14nm capacity is Intel and it is not very likely that Intel will sell capacity to its rivals.

What this means then is that the world is not getting cutting edge GPU technology from the two top vendors because Apple has a huge control of TSMC and Intel is Intel.

Nvidia takes the licensing route

Posted on January 5, 2015 by - News

nvidia-gangnam-style-330pxIn a bid to generate more revenues, graphics firm Nvidia is to start licensing its GPU designs to other companies.
Nvidia has already started licensing its “Kepler” graphics processor and, according to Digitimes Research, it will do the same for its future processor Maxwell.
The move is not entirely unexpected – Nvidia is following in the footsteps of British chip company ARM.  ARM’s business is essentially rooted in licensing – its engineers design cores which are then fabricated by its customers.
The research house claims that although Nvidia has, in principle, been ready to license its intellectual property since June 2013, the big leap forward will come with the release of its Maxwell processor.
It believes Maxwell will show a performance boost of as much as 160 percent and that will be a revenue generator for the company.
Nvidia has a collection of something over 7,000 patents and has recently been increasingly litigious, filing lawsuits against giants Samsung and Qualcomm for allegedly infringing its patents.  It may find that these two companies will not necessarily become customers unless courts find in Nvidia’s favour.

Calxeda tech gets second life

Posted on December 22, 2014 by - News

calxeda_energy_core_handTechnology from Calxeda, which shut down last year, is being  repackaged and built by Silver Lining Systems.

Last year founder Barry Evans shuttered Calxeda which pioneered low-power ARM-based chips for use in servers for scale-out data centre environments. At the time, the industry was not interested. In December 2013, Calxeda ran out of money when financing fell through.

A year later Calxeda’s technology is re-emerging with a company called Silver Lining Systems (SLS), which is developing compute and storage servers that will use the IP Calxeda developed. It will introduce those systems early next year.

Evans told EWeek that it was exciting to see the technology he helped create, which many in the industry thought was gone, re-enter the highly competitive market. He is working with Silver Lining as adviser.

SLS is the cloud subsidiary of AtGames Cloud Holdings, a 13-year-old cloud gaming vendor that last year was developing systems based on Calxeda technology. When the company shut down, AtGames wanted to continue to develop its systems, so it bought Calxeda’s assets and found a home for them in Silver Lining, which was created by AtGames as part of a larger R&D effort to build scale-out cloud compute capabilities.

Silver Lining is working with ARM and Foxconn it has run successful proof-of-concept projects, and the systems will be introduced in early 2015, according to an email sent to media outlets.

Chips with built in security go postal

Posted on December 19, 2014 by - News

smartphones-genericABI Research believes that by the end of this year processors including embedded security technology will reach the billion mark.

Vendors are building in the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) will reach 366 million as part of that figure.

The shipments are driven by governments, financial service companies and other enterprises largely to ensure secure ID and payments.

The market for TEE devices is still in its early stages, said ABI.  But shipments are bound to increase for them and for Host Card Emulation (HCE).

ARM is integrating TruZeone architecture into every Cortex-A family processor it licenses to vendors.

Unlike TEE devices, HCE depends on the cloud and lets banks introduce mobile NFC products without relying on smartphone SIMs.  ABI said that HCE support in smartphones is growing exponentially, and will account for shipments of 252 million by the end of the year.

Players in the game include ARM, Nok Nok Labs, NXP Semi, Infineon, Trustonic and Obertur Technologies.

AMD, Intel in tablet spat

Posted on December 11, 2014 by - News

tweedledummBitter semiconductor rivals Intel and AMD are set to up the stakes in 2015 with a fresh assault on the tablet market.

Both companies are often seen as the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of the chip market, continually foraying into battles where no one actually gets hurt.

But Digitimes, which is privy to both companies’ future roadmaps, said that they’ll foray out once more in an attempt to capture some slice of the tablet pie – estimated to represent 200 million units in 2015.

Intel has been forced to provide subsidies to companies in an attempt to bolster its rather feeble market share in the tablet and mobile markets.

It will kick off the show by releasing a system-on-a-chip (SoC) device codenamed Cherry Trail, which will be built using a 14 nanometre process and may be with the world as early as March next year.  The chip will have lower power consumption and support Windows and Android operating systems, said the wire.

But AMD is not going to stand still after receiving that SoC on the jaw.  It will introduce an X86 device dubbed Nolan, and an ARM device called Amur in the second half of next year.

ARM fails to dent X86 server market

Posted on November 25, 2014 by - News

intel_log_reversedBeancounters at mighty chip behemoth Intel can stop playing with their worry beads as it looks as though servers based on ARM technology are failing to dent X86 server business.

A report in Taiwanese wire Digitimes said that ARM has made serious attempts to invade the server business but hasn’t succeeding in storming the Intel fortress.

And with Intel having an 80 percent share in the PC market, shareholders in the chip giant believe that despite its appalling performance in the mobile space, it will continue to make high margins from its server chip offerings.

AMD is waiting in the wings but doesn’t have a great deal of traction in the server business,  the report claims.

Both ARM and Intel hope to make vast profits by being in the vanguard in offering products that will leverage the expected boom in the “internet of things”.

Intel and ARM are relying on cloud based apps to make everything work together.  These things are only a tiny fraction of the internet of things, however, and it’s hard to see either company having much of a share in the expected bonanza.

Intel to carry on subsidising tablets

Posted on November 24, 2014 by - News

Internet of ThingsThe attempt by Intel to penetrate the tablet market has cost it dear in subsidies over the last two years.

But it appears that the chip giant hasn’t given up the ghost on such a plan and, according to Taiwanese wire Digitimes, is likely to pour more cash into the venture.

Intel’s problem is that it has faced overwhelming competition on price from companies that use microprocessors from Mediatek and Qualcomm, based on designs from British chip designer ARM.

Even though Intel has several ARM licences, it declines to use those to compete and wants the market to realise the important part it plays in the mobile arena.  Or, to put it differently, Intel is a proud company and doesn’t want to lose face.

The subsidies to vendors have been aimed at tablets with screen dimensions of 10 inches and below, but Digitimes now says it may well extend those subsidies to tablets 12 inches and below.

Intel cannot afford not to be in the tablet business because it wants to be a key player in the so called Internet of Things.  Last week the chip giant said it was going to merge its mobile and comms businesses with its PC business, which will effectively disguise the hole in its profit and loss statements in the future.

Intel expects Chinese small chipmaker rebellion

Posted on November 12, 2014 by - News

1900-intl-forces-including-us-marines-enter-beijing-to-put-down-boxer-rebellion-which-was-aimed-at-ridding-china-of-foreigners-Intel boss Brian Krzanich has been consulting his i Ching and expects ARM to be a spent force in China within a few years.

He claims that new semiconductor partners in China will migrate to Intel and give up on ARM technology more widely used in smartphones and tablets.

Intel this year signed deals with Rockchip and Spreadtrum Communications to use Intel’s technology to make chips for low-cost smartphones and tablets aimed at China’s fast-growing consumer market.

Spreadtrum and Rockchip specialise in smartphone and tablet platforms that are easy for manufacturers to use. At the moment they use ARM technology.

Intel has been writing agreements with the Chinese chipmakers which still allow them to make ARM-based chips, but Krzanich thinks that in a couple of years they will not see the point.

With Qualcomm offering high-end chips based on ARM and Taiwan’s MediaTek attacking the Chinese market with inexpensive chips also designed using ARM, adopting Intel’s architecture is the only way that anyone can offer a way to differentiate with better performance and features.

The only way for small manufacturers to compete is by going to Intel, he reasons.

Intel and Rockchip are working on an Intel-branded tablet SoC, with Rockchip contributing expertise on connectivity, graphics and its experience in China’s domestic market. Spreadtrum, is working with Intel on SoCs expected out next year.

Since both outfits are small, they lack the resources to make separate chips based on Intel and ARM technology over the long term.

Krzanich said Intel might collaborate with more companies there.

ARM claims new Mali will be smoking

Posted on October 28, 2014 by - News

Bob_Marley__Smoking_Blighty chip designer ARM claims that its new Mali chips will offer both higher performance and higher energy efficiency. The top-end Mali-T860, for instance, supports 4K graphics and beyond while “being 45 percent more energy efficient across a wide range of content” compared to ARM’s current offerings.

The new GPUs include the high-end Mali-T860 GPU, the Mali-T830 GPU, and the Mali-T820 GPU. ARM is also introducing the Mali-V550 video processor and the Mali-DP550 display processor chip, which a coprocessor interface and support for 7 layer composition.

ARM said that the Mali-T860 is 45 percent more energy efficient across a wide range of content. It can support 4K graphics and beyond. Each processor is tuned to a different mobile submarket.

ARM claims its silicon will make it from drawing board to device far faster than before and there will be lots of them ranging from low end to high spec chips.

Currently, ARM Mali GPU designs are used by 60 partners and there were more than 400 million Mali GPUs shipping in 2013 alone.

HP intros ARM into datacentres

Posted on September 29, 2014 by - News

HPIn a sign that things wont be what they were in the past, HP said it has announced two servers based on ARM architecture, rather than the old fashioned Intel stuff.

The two enterprise class servers use 64-bit ARM microprocessors which it said “offer value choice in their compute strategy”.  Translated out of marketing speak, this means ARM based chips are much cheaper than Intel X86 chips.

HP is also offering a production platform letting software developers create, test and port applications to the ARM server.

The servers belong to HP’s Proliant Moonshot family –  the company claims that they will let companies scale to any workload, and are specifically aimed at datacentres.

The HP Proliant m400 server is part of a strategy the company has developed over some years to fit high engineering standards.

“ARM technology will change the dynamics of how enterprises build IT solutions to quickly address customer challenges,” said Antonio Neri, senior vice president and general manager, Servers and Networking, HP. “HP’s history, culture of innovation and proven leadership in server technology position us as the most qualified player to empower customers with greater choice in the server marketplace.”

The servers will support Ubuntu, Metal as a Service (MAAS) software preinstalled, and also offers IBM Informix.

HP customers already include Sandia National Labs, the University of Utah and Paypal.  The servers are available today.