Items tagged with (NASDAQ:ARMH)
Is Apple on the cusp of a hardware renaissance? The answer depends, in part, on how much stock you put into various leaks and rumors. One of the persistent rumors we have been hearing for quite some time is Apple making a transition to its own custom processors for its Mac products, rather than continuing to lean on Intel. We know from Apple's past decisions and present strategies that it prefers to use in-house designs wherever possible. The strategy has worked out for the iPhone—the custom processors inside Apple's handsets are designed by Apple and based on ARM's architecture. The same thing could apply to Apple's Mac systems in 2020. To wit, we wrote about this very thing almost exactly...
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Apple has managed to poach an experienced chip engineer from ARM as the company ramps up its effort to design more of its iPhone and other hardware in-house. In addition, Apple is reportedly looking to develop its own processors for Mac systems in a protracted shift away from Intel, though I'm skeptical of this angle. Here's what we know. Apple hired Mike Filippo in May to serve as a chip architect. Filippo spent the past decade working at ARM, most recently as the company's lead CPU architect. He oversaw the development of several different processors, including the Cortex-A76, A72, and A57, along with ARM's Hercules-AE, a next-generation automotive enhanced CPU. Prior to working at ARM, Filippo...
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Computex and E3 are both in the rear view mirror, but that does not mean the usual participants have nothing left to announce. NVIDIA proved otherwise on Monday by announcing support for ARM processors. This, according to NVIDIA, provides a new path to build extremely energy-efficient, AI-enabled exascale supercomputers. "Supercomputers are the essential instruments of scientific discovery, and achieving exascale supercomputing will dramatically expand the frontier of human knowledge," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "As traditional compute scaling ends, power will limit all supercomputers. The combination of NVIDIA’s CUDA-accelerated computing and ARM’s energy-efficient...
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Huawei is in a world of hurt right now, and ARM just delivered another painful blow, perhaps the biggest one of all so far. Following suit with several other US semiconductor companies, ARM is suspending its business operations with Huawei. The move, if permanent, could have a devastating effect on the massive Chinese telecom. ARM's decision to sever ties with Huawei is in compliance with a recent US ban that prohibits American companies from selling to Huawei without a government-issued license. If taking a broader overview of the situation, this also has to do with the current trade war with China, along with lingering security concerns. According to a BBC report, ARM sent its employees a memo...
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Linus Torvalds has never been one to mince words. Sometimes he can be a little too brash in his opinion, a trait he acknowledged before taking a brief hiatus for some soul searching. He is also extremely knowledgeable. A bit of both (brashness and knowledge) came out in a series of forum posts discussing ARM hardware and servers. Straight to the point, Linus believes that without a development platform, "ARM in the server space is never going to make it." Furthermore, he calls the attempt to pitch ARM as a 64-bit hyperscaling model is "idiotic," in part because of the lack of customers in that space. On top of it all, Intel is a juggernaut in the server sector, so pricing doesn't play that big...
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Arm is prepared to take the fight to Intel with respect to PC compute performance, and to prove its point, the company has released its first forward-looking roadmap for CPU IP. While ARM is well known for its dominance of processors used in mobile devices, it hopes that consistent year-over-year performance improvements will have Intel shaking in its boots. Qualcomm attempted to encroach into Intel territory with the Snapdragon 835-powered "Always Connected" PCs in 2017, and it will further that push with the Snapdragon 850 Mobile Platform in 2018, which promises a 30 percent overall performance uplift. To help empower companies like Qualcomm, Apple and Samsung to deliver more...
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ARM is teaming up with Samsung's foundry to design and manufacturer the recently announced Cortex-A76 core on a 7-nanometer low power plus (LPP) processor. Sometime down the line, they will extend this collaboration to 5nm low power early (LPE). This collaborating is expected to enable processing speeds in excess of 3GHz for the next-generation of mobile devices. "Building an extensive and differentiated design ecosystem is a must for our foundry customers," said Ryan Sanghyun Lee, vice president of Foundry Marketing Team at Samsung Electronics. "Collaboration with Arm in the fields of IP solutions is crucial to increase high-performance computing power and accelerate the growth of artificial...
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Among the many market segments that Samsung competes in, the company builds its own custom processors based on ARM's architectural designs. You know these as "Exynos" chips and they are often found in the international versions of Samsung's flagship smartphones. Samsung's next top-tier chipset, the Exynos 9820, will take performance to a new level and is said to be faster than ARM's recently introduced Cortex-A76. That's a pretty big deal, considering the Cortex-A76 is the latest and greatest from ARM. As we discussed in a previous article, the Cortex-A76 represents ARM's most radical overhaul over previous designs to date. It's a brand new architecture that brings decisive improvements to power...
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Last week, Arm showed off the inner workings of its new Machine Learning Processor design, but that is not all that company had waiting in the wings. Arm is also detailing more cutting-edge technology in the form of its Cortex-A76 CPU, Mali-G76 GPU, and Mali-V76 VPU designs. All three chips are slated to be heavy-hitters in their respective categories, and thanks to some on-campus, in depth briefings earlier this month, we have all of the details to share... Cortex A-76 The Cortex-A76 represents Arm’s most radical overhaul over previous designs. The A76’s brand-new architecture brings decisive improvements to power and efficiency. Arm’s processor engineers worked with a...
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After taking a measured, wait-and-see approach to machine learning, Arm is ready to jump into the fold full throttle. Today, the company is following up on its Project Trillium announcement from back in February with new details surrounding its machine learning processor, also known as the neural-network processing unit or NPU. To quickly recap, Project Trillium encompasses Arm’s push to leverage machine learning and neural network operations across their line-up of processors – whether that processing takes place on the CPU, GPU, or its new NPU. Arm’s goal is to make machine learning feasible “on the edge.” The edge largely describes standalone devices such as smartphones...
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Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are coming in at a rapid pace, and mobile devices seem to be the new frontier. ARM's processor architecture underpins nearly every smartphone sold today and provides the brains for countless other products in widely-varied market segments. Today, the company is looking to expand its domination of the smartphone world with a new suite of products -- Project Trillium -- that will boost machine learning and neural network operations. Taken down to the basics, Project Trillium consists of three primary components. The first is the actual machine learning processor, which will be available for ARM partners starting in the second half of 2018 (an early preview...
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There is a lot of buzz surrounding Meltdown and Spectre, two recently disclosed chip vulnerabilities that have hardware and software makers scrambling to release patches to deal with the situation. What is not fully known yet is what performance impact these patches will have. Regardless of how all it shakes out, some of Intel's data center customers that run cloud networks are looking to jump ship. The chip flaws, if you want to call them that (and many do, though Intel claims its processors are working as intended) collectively affect all modern CPUs to some extent. However, Intel's silicon seems to be the most affected, as the way they are designed leaves them susceptible to both types of...
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Security researchers this week dropped a bombshell on pretty much everyone who owns a computer, saying there are inherent flaws in modern processors that could allow an attacker to access sensitive information, including passwords and other contents stored in what's supposed to be protected memory. At first it was reported that only Intel processors were affected, but later analysis has revealed that AMD and ARM chips are flawed as well. It's a stinky situation, right? Well, yes, it certainly is. But it doesn't have to be dire. To quickly rehash, the flaws have been dubbed Meltdown and Spectre. It was the former that was talked about most at the beginning, and for the time being, it seems limited...
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If you've been following the tech or security news for the past few days, then you no doubt know of a security vulnerability that reportedly affects all Intel processors. OS vendors have been working to mitigate the issue with kernel patches, but those software Band-Aids can come with some performance handicaps as a side effect. Today, we're learning more about what exactly is going on, and that there are not one, but actually two vulnerabilities that have been disclosed. It's bad enough that one of them targets Intel processors, but the second affects ALL modern processors as well -- including those based on architectures from Intel, AMD and ARM. So, we present to you Meltdown and Spectre....
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