Showing posts with label ARM Ecosystem. Show all posts
An Intel exec strongly hints at this in a recently published interview.
A little while back, microprocessor giant Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) made public that it had cancelled its SoFIA family of processors for low-end and mid-range smartphones and Broxton for high-end smartphones. When this news broke, it seemed to me that the chip giant had all but canned its plans to compete in the smartphone applications processor market.
A little while back, microprocessor giant Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) made public that it had cancelled its SoFIA family of processors for low-end and mid-range smartphones and Broxton for high-end smartphones. When this news broke, it seemed to me that the chip giant had all but canned its plans to compete in the smartphone applications processor market.
However,
at a recent investor conference, Intel exec Brice Hill hinted that the company
may try its hand at the mobile applications processor market.
Then,
in a recent interview with IDG News Service, Intel's Murthy Renduchintala
flat-out said the cancellation of the SoFIA/Broxton projects doesn't imply that
Intel is "no longer doing mobile platforms."
He
even went on to say that, going forward, Intel's goal with respect to mobile
platforms is to "talk less and do more."
So,
it's quite clear that Intel plans to reenter the market for mobile applications
processors. However, buried in the interview, Murthy strongly hinted that any
future smartphone processors from Intel would be based on ARM processors,
rather than Intel's own Atom processors.
ARM
is the established architecture in mobile:
During
the interview, IDG News Service asked Murthy if the company would be "open
to the idea of taking an ARM CPU license."
Murthy's
response was "yes." He further went on to explain that "there
are many areas in the ARM ecosystem where Intel can pragmatically play in for
its own benefit," and that he is a "big believer in paying respect to
established ecosystems."
Remember
that in the mobile processor market, the ARM architecture is the established
standard with overwhelmingly dominant market share. Intel tried to capture some
share with processors based on its Atom processor cores (these cores implement
Intel's own X86 instruction set architecture), but those efforts clearly
failed.
Although
I don't blame the X86 architecture for that failure, I do believe Intel's Atom
processor designs were not competitive with what ARM's processor designs (which
can be licensed by mobile chip manufacturers) had to offer in terms of
performance/power/area.
I
get the sense that Murthy recognizes that the easiest and safest way to reenter
the mobile processor market (and actually succeed in it) is to rely on as many
third-party technologies as possible.
An
interesting longer-term opportunity:
It
is by no means guaranteed that just because Intel reenters the smartphone
processor market, it will actually be successful. Intel's execution over the
last several years in the mobile processor market was nothing less than
atrocious, and the venture ultimately wound up costing shareholders a lot of
money.
The company's Cortex-R52 targets markets where safety is critical, including autonomous vehicles, robotics and health care.
ARM
is looking to establish itself in the burgeoning autonomous car market with a
new chip design that is aimed at addressing the high safety standards needed
for not only driverless vehicles but also other areas such as industrial and
medical robots.
Company
officials on Sept. 20 unveiled the Cortex-R52, a system-on-a-chip (SoC) design
built on the company's ARMv8-R architecture that is designed to comply with a
range of safety standards—such as ISO 26262 ASIL D and IEC 61508 SIL 3—that
apply to situations in the growing internet of things (IoT), such as autonomous
cars and robots in health care settings, where safety and security is paramount
in the interaction between humans and machines.
The
includes with robots that assist doctors in surgery to self-driving cars that
need to understand the environment around them and immediately react to ensure
the safety of the drivers and the people around the cars. In addition, the
systems need to be highly secure to protect them against hackers.
"We
are helping partners to meet particular market opportunities, especially in
fully autonomous vehicles and robotics systems where specific functionality is
required for safety-critical tasks," James McNiven, general manager for
CPU and media processing groups at ARM, said in a statement.
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Like
other chip companies, ARM—which is being bought by Softbank for $32.2
billion—is working to branch out beyond its core markets to gain traction in a
broad range of emerging growth areas being fueled by the rapid proliferation of
connected devices, systems and sensors that make up the growing IoT. ARM
designs SoCs and licenses those designs to a wide variety of chip
manufacturers, such as Qualcomm, Samsung and Applied Micro. Most smartphones
and tablets run on ARM-designed processors, but now company officials are
looking to extend the reach of the architecture into other areas, from the data
center to the IoT.
A
growing number of ARM chip partners—including Qualcomm and Broadcom—are rolling
out new products for the autonomous vehicle space. ARM also has been building
up its capabilities in the IoT, including with the acquisition last year of
Offspark, a company that specialized in security software for connected devices
and sensors.
In
a post on the company blog, James Scobie, a product manager at ARM, wrote about
the growing demand for safety and security in IoT systems.
"Across
multiple markets, electronic systems are becoming more complex—including
automotive, industrial control and healthcare," Scobie wrote.
"Vehicles are beginning to drive themselves, industrial robots are
becoming increasingly collaborative, and medical systems are automated to
assist with surgery or deliver medication. More of these systems are demanding
functionally safe operation and requiring that functional safety be provided at
a higher safety level than previous generations of systems demanded."
The
Cortex-R52 architecture was created to address those functional safety needs,
not only in self-driving cars, but also in increasingly automated factories
that include autonomous robots that use machine learning and vision systems to
enable them to work with less human control, he wrote.
"Outside
the factory, robotics will be used in environments too harsh for humans, such
as the nuclear industry, where there is a need to maintain precise and assured
operation," Scobie wrote. "They can also be used in the medical
operating theaters with remote surgery. In both areas, functionally safe
operation is critical."
A
key point in the Cortex-R52 is that there is what officials called
hardware-enforced separation of various software tasks to make sure the code
that is critical for safety is isolated. The hardware is managed by a software
hypervisor. Not only does this ensure the protection of the code, but also
lessens the amount of code that must be safety-certified, which makes software
integration, maintenance and validation easier and development faster, they
said.
"The
Cortex-R52's ability to compartmentalize software provides our users with the
best solution for safety without loss of determinism," Fabio Marchiò, vice
president of STMicroelectronics' Automotive and Discrete Group and general
manager of its Automotive Digital Division, said in a statement. "Its
virtualization support simplifies the consolidation of applications and
functions into a single processor, delivering a shorter integration time."
ARM is beefing up its safety technology for the ARM Cortex-R52, a processor designed for self-driving vehicles.
The
Cambridge, England-based company was recently acquired by Japan’s SoftBank for
$31 billion. And now it is expanding its chip designs to include a processor
with the robust, real-time performance needed for autonomous cars.
The
new chip will simplify the path for certification of automotive applications,
industrial robots, and medical operations. The processor — which ARM will
license to other chip manufacturers — must comply with tough safety standards
such as ISO 26262 ASIL D and IEC 61508 SIL 3.
It
will enable applications as diverse as surgical automation, safety management
and automotive powertrain control. STMicroelectronics is the first ARM chip
manufacturing partner to announce it has licensed the high-performance
processor to enable it to create highly integrated system-on-chips (SoCs) for
the automotive market.
“If
these systems go wrong in any way, they can affect life,” said Richard York,
worldwide marketing and business development manager at ARM, in an interview
with VentureBeat. “The R-52 will make it much easier to do increasingly complex
software.”
The
Cortex-R52 offers hardware-enforced separation of software tasks to ensure
safety-critical code is fully isolated. So when one part of the system goes
down, it’s easier to decipher what happened. This allows the hardware to be
managed by a software hypervisor policing the execution and resourcing of
tasks. By enabling the precise and robust separation of software, the
Cortex-R52 decreases the amount of code that must be safety-certified, so
speeding up development as software integration, maintenance and validation is
easier. The processor also deals with increased software complexity while
delivering the determinism and fast context switching that real-time systems
demand.
“The
Cortex-R52 supports our Smart Driving vision by enabling a new range of
high-performance, power-efficient SoCs for any in-vehicle application demanding
real-time operation and the highest levels of functional safety, including
powertrain, chassis and ADAS,” said Fabio Marchiò, Automotive & Discrete
group vice president and Automotive Digital Division general manager at
STMicroelectronics, in a statement. “The Cortex-R52’s ability to
compartmentalize software provides our users with the best solution for safety
without loss of determinism. Its virtualization support simplifies the consolidation
of applications and functions into a single processor, delivering a shorter
integration time.”
Denso,
a leading global supplier of advanced automotive technology, is supporting the
launch.The availability of ARM Fast Models and Cycle Models enables software
partners to develop solutions for the processor. They further speed the path to
market as software developers will get access to the Cortex-R52 early in the
design process.
The
Cortex-R52 is 35 percent faster than the previous generation Cortex-R5, which
is already deployed in a range of safety applications. It has achieved a score
of 1.36 Automark/MHz on the EEMBC AutoBench, the highest in its class, using
the Green Hills Compiler 2017.
The
processor has protections against various kinds of random errors, design
errors, and software errors. If it senses a system problem, the processor has
to handle cores such as shutting down a vehicle and bringing it to a safe halt.
So it has to be able to sense, perceive and analyze, make a decision, and acutate
(or execute on that decision).
James
Scobie, product manager for the Cortex-R52, said chips based on the design will
likely be available in 2018.
