Your Tech Story

arm

Arm

Chipmaker Arm to make its own semiconductor

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By

Arm, a company acquired by SoftBank, is creating its own chip to demonstrate the possibilities of its ideas as it looks to expand after a successful IPO subsequently this year.

According to those informed on the development, the corporation will collaborate with manufacturing companies to produce the new chip. They define it as one of the most sophisticated chipmaking endeavours the Cambridge-based organisation has ever undergone.

Arm
Image Source: timesnownews.com

The initiative comes as SoftBank works to increase Arm’s revenue and draw investment to a planned IPO on the Nasdaq stock exchange within New York.

Also Read: SAP reports revenue growth in Q1

Instead of engaging directly in the design and development of semiconductors, the corporation typically gives its architectural designs to chip producers.

It is hoped that the prototype will enable it to show the larger market, the strength and potential of its concepts.

With partners like Samsung & Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., Arm has already developed several test chips, mostly to help software developers become more acquainted with the latest developments.

However, other business leaders told the Financial Times that the company’s most recent chip, on which it only recently began working, is “more advanced” than anything else. According to them, Arm has also established a bigger team to start this project and is focused on chip manufacturers rather than software developers while developing the product.

As insiders informed on the plan, the business has established a brand-new “solutions engineering” division that will oversee the manufacturing of these initial prototype processors for mobile phones, laptops, and various other gadgets.

A veteran of the chip business Kevork Kechichian, who entered Arm’s core executive division in the month of February, is in charge of the solutions engineering division. Before joining Qualcomm, he worked with chipmakers NXP Semiconductors & NXP Semiconductors, where he oversaw the creation of Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon processor.

The group will also broaden Arm’s current initiatives to improve design performance as well as safety and to increase access for developers to its devices.

Also Read: Meta lays off tech teams, battering employee morale

Rumours regarding Arm’s chip-making activities have raised concerns in the semiconductor sector that, if it produces a high-quality chip, it could attempt to promote it in the years to come and so challenge some of its biggest clients, like MediaTek or Qualcomm.

According to those close to Arm, the company is just developing a prototype and has no ambitions to put it on the market or licence the creation. Arm chose not to respond.

Qualcomm

Qualcomm Sued By ARM For Licensing And Trademark Violations.

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By

Arm Limited sued Qualcomm limited for the violation of contract and trademark breaches resulting in setting up an official confrontation between SoftBank Group Corporation’s acquired chip company and one of its greatest customers.

The dispute focuses on Qualcomm’s acquisition of Nuvia corporation, a chip startup, last year. The startup produced chip designs by using Arm licenses and it was not in their rights to transfer the designs to Qualcomm without permission, based on the suit filed in US district court, Delaware. According to a report, Arm said that Nuvia’s licenses were terminated after negotiations failed to a proper conclusion in February.

Qualcomm
Image source: storage.googleapis.com

Arm and Qualcomm are two of the most prominent chip companies worldwide and the conflict between them is certain to be closely watched in the tech industry. Qualcomm, based in San Diego, is the largest smartphone-used processor and modem developing firm. It depends on an instruction set from UK-based Arm, a firm that has made the majority of the underlying technology for mobile electronics, just like many other companies in the chip industry. An instruction set is a fundamental code that chips use or follow to operate software such as operating systems.

“Because Qualcomm attempted to transfer Nuvia licenses without Arm’s consent, which is a standard restriction under Arm’s license agreements, Nuvia’s licenses terminated in March 2022,” Arm stated in a statement. “Before and after that date, Arm made multiple good faith efforts to seek a resolution.”

Qualcomm asked Arm for verification of a new processor core in May. “Based on the timing and circumstances surrounding Qualcomm’s request, discovery is likely to show that Qualcomm’s processor core design is based on or in part the processor core design developed under the prior Nuvia licenses,” the suit stated.

Source: indianexpress.com

Qualcomm said something that the complaint ignores, that its licenses cover custom-designed processors with Arm.

Qualcomm purchased Nuvia to strengthen and enhance its technology and enable it to field more powerful and beefy chips. It is a fraction of a larger strategy by Cristian Amon, chief Executive officer of Qualcomm, to reduce the firm’s dependency on the smartphone industry and take a share of the laptop chip market and ultimately, the remunerative server processor trade. But this lawsuit may jeopardize his whole plan and efforts.

Qualcomm, said Arm does not have any rights to interfere with NUVIA’s or Qualcomm’s innovations, which acquired Nuvia for $1.4 billion last year.

“Arm’s complaint ignores the fact that Qualcomm has broad, well-established license rights covering its custom-designed CPUs, and we are confident those rights will be affirmed,” said, Ann Chaplin, General Counsel of Qualcomm in a statement.

“Qualcomm’s opportunity moving forward with the PC (and potentially server) business is utterly dependent on Nuvia designs, and Nuvia is the primary means by which Arm can get into Windows PCs. So, the companies really need to partner well if they want to have a meaningful impact on the PC market,” Bob O’Donnell of Tech-analysis Research, said.

Source: www.reuters.com

Arm behaves as traffic police on the use of technology by authenticating the compatibility of every new processor. That provides it with a unique view into what the firms are doing in the industry. As per Arm’s rules, anything developed under the revoked licenses should be destroyed.

Qualcomm is also fully aware of licensing disputes. The firm gets a large piece of its profit from trading the rights to its technology which is the main part of mobile wireless communications. Many renowned brands are its customers, Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc., the two major smartphone brands, being its important customers.

Qualcomm arose victorious from a wide-ranging legal confrontation with Apple in 2019. Also, it won a court verdict on an appeal in opposition to the US Federal Trade Commission, which claimed that the company was using ravaging licensing activities.

ARMv9

Intel’s market competitor Arm introduces Armv9 with major architectural updates in a long time.

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By

After a very long time, Arm has introduced a major update unveiling the biggest technical overhaul with Armv9. With this new chip, Arm is all set to give a very tough market competition to Intel which is the world’s biggest chipmaker. With Armv9 the company has implemented major modifications to the chips, the first being Artificial Intelligence (AI). The AI revolution is a major breakthrough of this century unleashing new potential for every industry. And, Arm has designed the new chip to handle the capabilities of machine learning (ML) for security and other purposes.

Major Upgrades by ARM

Every day millions of devices are getting connected with the help of the internet and Arm is trying to enhance the computing abilities with its products. With the help of advanced architectural chips powered by AI, many devices are exploring new capabilities. The AI software helps greatly many industries to be very dynamic and provide real-time solutions and updates. With the launch of Armv9, the company has said that the upgrades are needed to support the spread of computing beyond phones, PCs, and servers. Arm wants the presence of its technology everywhere and that it becomes the next big solution for the tech industry.

Simon Segars, CEO of Arm, said that “As we look toward a future that will be defined by AI, we must lay a foundation of leading-edge compute that will be ready to address the unique challenges to come.” He further explained that Armv9 is the next computing answer for the industries trying to harness the power of AI and at the same time keeping the security in check. The company’s next 300 billion Arm-based chips will be driven by extremely powerful design and security.

Source: arm.com

Arm’s technology and processor designs are currently dominant in the smartphone industry but the company is gradually trying to expand in PCs and server fields as well. Currently, it sells its designs and licenses an instruction set to Apple, Samsung, and Qualcomm.

The New Armv9 Architecture

As the number of chips designed and shipped by Arm increases every year, very soon 100 percent of the world’s shared data will be processed on Arm. With the increasing demand for Arm’s chip, the responsibility of the company increases as well to enhance the capabilities for improved performance and better security. According to the company, these are two main priorities of Armv9 and that it will accelerate to provide more specific computing for AI, Internet of Things (IoT), and 5G gain momentum.

ARMv9
Image Source: bbc.com

Enhanced security

To tackle the security problem that is increasing in the tech world much rapidly, Arm is introducing the Arm Confidential Compute Architecture (CCA). This feature will help shield portions of code and data from access or modification while in-use, even from privileged software, by performing the computation in a hardware-based secure environment.

Henry Sanders, corporate vice president and chief technology officer, Azure Edge and Platforms at Microsoft said that “The increasing complexity of use cases from edge to cloud cannot be addressed with a one-size-fits-all solution.” Due to this reason heterogeneous computing is becoming more versatile and hence in demand among hardware and software developers.

Source: arm.com

Arm has made this possible in collaboration with Microsoft thus establishing a synergy between hardware and software. Arm has the capability of powering billions of devices and connecting them in a heterogeneous computing ecosystem.

Better performance through system design

Arm’s chip design has always increased the CPU performance and Armv9 will continue to do so. Arm says that the Armv9 generation will increase the CPU performance by 30 percent over the next two generations of mobile and infrastructure CPUs. So, Arm’s Total Compute Design methodology will accelerate overall compute performance through focused system-level hardware and software optimizations and an increase in use-case performance (Arm.com).

The new Armv9 design will give a tough competition to Intel as many companies are slowly inclining towards Arm’s processors.

Samsung

Samsung Introduces its Most Powerful Mobile Processor Exynos 2100 in Partnership with Arm

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By

With the beginning of the new year, many companies are up with new launches. On 12th January, the South Korean tech giant Samsung also came up with its latest flagship processor Exynos 2100. And, according to the news speculating around, the company will be powering its upcoming Galaxy S21 series of smartphones using the newly launched chipset.

Samsung Powerful Mobile Processor Exynos 2100

Samsung just introduced its very first premium 5G-integrated mobile processor SoC composed on a 5nm process node. The new launch is basically in competition with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888, where Samsung has also added new features to their processor such that to stand out with its specifications.

Like Samsung’s previous launch, the Exynos 1080, the new Exynos also does not support the custom CPU microarchitecture. To raise the performance of the processor, Samsung has partnered with the leading technology provider of processor IP, Arm. The new processor will also be including the ARM second-generation Valhall architecture-based ARM Mali-G78 GPU as compensation for its previous mistakes of not having its own custom ARM-based performance cores added to its predecessor processors.

“Our Exynos team has been committed to creating premium mobile computing experiences by bringing innovations to processors that are at the heart of today’s smart devices. Today we are delighted to introduce the Exynos 2100, our most advanced mobile processor yet. Armed with powerful processing technologies and an advanced 5G modem on a power-efficient 5nm process node, Exynos 2100 will set a new standard for tomorrow’s flagship mobile devices,” said Inyup Kang, President of System LSI Business at Samsung Electronics.

What is New in Exynos 2100?

Exynos 2100 is a high-speed octa-core chipset. It has got one Cortex-X1 (core clocked at 2.9GHz), three high-performing Cortex-A78 (with a speed up to 2.8GHz), and four power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores (clocked at 2.2Ghz) performance CPUs from Arm. Adding to that, Samsung has declared that the new processor will offer a 30% better performance than the Exynos 990, and 10% better overall performance, with 20% lesser battery consumption. The company clearly mentioned that the chipset will provide up to 26-trillion-operations-per-second (TOPS) over twice the power efficiency making the processor faster than its previous versions.

Samsung
Image Source: zdnet.com

The company has also done excellent work to fulfill all the AI needs of today’s time, such that offering support for Augmented Reality (AR)/Virtual Reality (VR) or Mixed Reality(MR). The chipset also boasts the advanced multi-IP governor (AMIGO), which will be a key technology to optimize the power usage for the CPUs, GPUs as well as other processes, resulting in lesser battery consumption and extended use time.

Other Features

Other than that, the processor will provide support for UFS 3.1 and UFS 2.1 storage. It will also be supporting the LPDDR5 RAM. As mentioned earlier, the chipset has got a built-in 5G (sub-6GHz/mmWave) modem, it will also continue to implement support for 4G LTE (1024 QAM), 3G WCDMA, and 2G GSM/CDMA networks as well. The processor also features support for Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6.

Camera-wise too, the company has done a great job. The new Exynos 2021 is compatible to provide support for up to 200MP sensors and 4K UHD video recording at 120 frames per second (fps). It also comes with the ability to decode the 8K video at 60fps.

The Vice President and General Manager Client Line of Business at Arm, Paul Williamson, said during the launch that the new technologies, such as 5G, advanced graphics and machine learning have played a critical role in enabling new mobile experiences. “ Arm and Samsung have collaborated closely to incorporate Arm’s powerful next-generation compute and graphics platform, at the heart of the Samsung Exynos 2100,” he added.

Noticeably, the launch event for the new Exynos 2100 took place two days ahead of the launch of Samsung’s new Galaxy S21, its next high-end flagship Galaxy S phone. The company confirmed that the processors have already been gone to mass production, and the new Galaxy S21 launching in India will also feature this latest processor in it.

Adobe

Adobe announces the release of ARM version of Lightroom for Apple’s M1 and Windows 10

Leave a Comment / apple, News, Product, Tech News / By

Yesterday, Adobe announced the release of the Arm version of the Lightroom app for both macOS and Windows 10. The new Lightroom version created especially for the M1 processors will take advantage of this processor leading to better productivity of the app. The Qualcomm powered Windows 10 is also compatible with running this app but only in those smartphones operating on ARM-based processors. The news became public via the blogpost of Adobe’s Photo Product Manager, Sharad Mangalick where he also mentions that the company intends to ship Apple M1 native versions as soon as they are ready. So, Adobe Lightroom will be available as a native app for the users of Apple’s M1 and Arm-based Windows 10, and also it is becoming a part of the Creative Suite installer.

Adobe new updates

In the blogpost by Sharad Mangalick, the news updates for the native app of Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Lightroom Classic are also mentioned. With the December updates, the users will now have the advantage of ProRAW format support. Once you take an image in the Apple ProRAW format you can import and edit those images in Lightroom. This applies to the desktop version as well. Adobe has also introduced new Lightroom widgets for iOS14 which will allow the users to quickly take photos and selfies using the Lightroom camera. The new widgets will allow the users to explore the Discover Edits and In-app tutorials from the Widget screen. In Lightroom iOS (iOS 14 and above), the users can drag these widgets onto the Home screen which will save some time and enable easy access.

Adobe
Image Source: somagnews.com

There is also a free Lightroom starter plan for the desktop version of the software. This can be used by both Mac and Windows users but geographically limited to Australia and New Zealand. The new customers can start this free Lightroom starter plan, get used to the core Lightroom features, and continue to use without a subscription or trial limit. But, in general, this software can be downloaded for free but the trial period is only for one week. After one week, a monthly subscription fee of $9.99 has to be paid for continuing to use it. This subscription pack also includes 1TB cloud storage. Though the beta version of the app is already available for download, the Classic lovers have to wait for some time for a full rollout.

The biggest update of 2020

In 2020, Adobe Lightroom has introduced many new updates throughout the year. In February, Lightroom released Raw defaults for Lightroom Classic and Adobe Camera Raw followed by introducing Improved GPU support for the same. In June 2020, the software included the option of Share Edits, Local Hue color updates, Raw Defaults, and Watermarks for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android users. Share Edits is a very helpful option for all the budding photographers out there helping them to understand the edits. Many big photographers on social media have started sharing the Lightroom presets which is a great advantage for the content creators.

In October 2020, one of the best new features of Lightroom so far was added, that is, Advanced Color Grading in Classic, Adobe Camera Raw, and Lightroom. This feature allows much finer control producing even more sensational photographs than normal Split Tones. Apart from the Hue and Saturation control that already existed, the new color grading option gave broader tones for the users to experiment with. With the three new options of Luminance, Blending, and Balance the users get the best chance to change the mood of their photographs accordingly. The color effects produced by the advanced color grading are mostly used by the video editors.

The recent Beta version of Photoshop

Apart from the latest Lightroom updates, Adobe has also released the Beta version of Photoshop that runs on M1 Macs and ARM-based Windows PCs. The new Lightroom updates have all the missing features of this new beta version of Photoshop. The beta version undoubtedly has improved performance but features like the content-aware fill, patch tool, healing brush, etc are missing. This beta version was released in November, just a couple of weeks before the release of the native Lightroom app. But, the updates in Lightroom show that Adobe is improving the existing features continuously striving to optimize the software for Arm and M1 devices.

Arm

Arm promises better gaming experience and productivity with the launch of the new Cortex-A78C CPU

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By

Mankind can never meet the absolute best when looking for excellence. In this tech-driven world, everything we are developing becomes backdated too soon. The development in the sphere of science is taking place rapidly aiming to optimize the working condition of every single thing surrounding us. With that being said, computers and smartphones are two mostly used gadgets that undergo modification most often. Enhancing the performance of a machine and increasing its ability to do more work is the prime concern of the modern world.

So, here’s good news for the smartphone users that yesterday Arm has announced a new CPU variant that will fuel the next-generation flagship smartphones. This new CPU variant is Cortex-A78C that can be seen in laptop SOCs and it is responsible for making the system highly efficient.

Arm Powering more than the next generation smartphones

Earlier this year, the company has launched Cortex-A78 and along with that Cortex-A which has claimed that it increased the efficiency of the system by 20%. The processor broke its record as compared to Cortex-A77 it was successful in increasing the energy savings by 50%. The company claims that as Cortex-A78 is exclusively for smartphones, the new Cortex-A78C will always power on-the-go devices like always-on laptops.

In May 2020, the company’s new products were focused mainly on mobile solutions. The company launched ARM Cortex-A78 CPU, ARM Mali-G78 GPU, and ARM Ethos-N78 NPU. Apart from this, the company also launched the Cortex-X Custom Program that allowed customization of products that go beyond the conventional line of Arm products. With ARM Cortex-A78 CPU as the foundation, the company launched Cortex-A78C to build a secure computing solution as well. This new product will be a combination of Arm’s high-efficiency Cortex-A78 as well as the advanced safety features of the Cortex-A78AE CPU. We are looking forward to a CPU with enhanced performance along with scalability and security.

Arm
Image Source: cdn.ndtv.com

Features of the new Cortex-A78C CPU

The new Cortex-A78C will provide support for up to 8 big CPU clusters leading to more homogenous multi big core computing. As compared to the Cortex-A78, this new octa-core configuration will improve multi-threaded performance. This will meet the demand for digital immersion workload such as increasing the all-day gaming productivity. The new CPU has focused on making the gaming experience better and the capability of the system higher. So, when this CPU will combine with Mali GPUs, the all-day gaming will become much better as Mali-G78 provided much better graphic performance and battery life.

For having a better experience while working with datasheets, Arm has increased the L3 cache memory to 8MB. This will help in enhancing the performance of the professional applications as well as bring AAA gaming to the next-generation devices. Apart from the improvement in gaming life, the CPU will also provide updates for data and device security. To ensure security, a new feature called Pointer Authentication (PAC) has been introduced to minimize the attack surface by preventing the attackers from controlling the software control flow. This key feature also ensures data safety when installing a third-party app.

The Arm has committed completely to respond to the needs of all users. It understands the need for a different market and thus trying to deliver CPU designed for individual needs. So, it has taken a big leap from Cortex-A78 to Cortex-A-78C by not thinking only about smartphones but also on-the-go devices. The company still hasn’t made clear that exactly which are the devices that can be powered by the new Cortex-A78C CPU.

More about Arm 

The Arm is a semiconductor and software design company whose primary interest lies in designing ARM processors. It has an important role to play in the market of smartphones, computers, and other devices. It licenses the right to many companies to build systems using Arm cores and eventually coming up with the most efficient device. Recently, Arm has come into a partnership with the US Defence Department’s DARPA Agency. This gives the agency access to Arm’s technology for research purposes. This year, NVIDIA announced plans on acquiring Arm which would mark the biggest acquisition in the semiconductor industry to date. Many multinational tech companies use Arm’s processor. Some of them are Apple, Samsung, Nokia, Sony, HTC, Qualcomm, etc.