The Next 100 Billion ARM-Powered Devices Will Feature ARM DynamIQ Technology

[kcarbotte]

ARM revealed a new multicore microarchitecture called ARM DynamIQ designed to improve the efficiency and performance of ARM Cortex-A processors and offers increased flexibility for use in a variety of cases including automation and AI.

The Next 100 Billion ARM-Powered Devices Will Feature ARM DynamIQ Technology : Read more

 

[sadsteve]

I didn't think ARM actually built and sold ARM based chips. Every ARM processors I've used were built by companies that licensed the ARM designs. Like Broadcom, TI, NXP, etc.

 

[Guest]

Sounds great, but we'll see how it works in practice. The tri-clusters (helio) are having problems switching efficiently, if/when we have 4+ different core models, will they really beat big.LITTLE in power efficiency.

 

[JamesSneed]

I didn't think ARM actually built and sold ARM based chips. Every ARM processors I've used were built by companies that licensed the ARM designs. Like Broadcom, TI, NXP, etc.

This struck me odd as well. You are right ARM only makes the designs. The way this copy paste pres release from ARM reads its as though they are actually manufacturing the chips but they are not.

"ARM is preparing a new generation of microprocessors, and the company expects to sell a whole lot of them."

Might restate this so its not so misleading as they are not selling microprocessors, they are only licensing the IP.

 

[aldaia]

ARM makes money in two ways. It charges an upfront license fee and also a royalty. The royalty is on a per chip basis. Every chip that contains ARM IP has a royalty associated with it. The royalty is typically 1 - 2% of the selling price of the chip.

Even if ARM dosn't actually buids chips, the statement that "the company expects to sell a whole lot of them." is still valid.

 

[JamesSneed]

ARM makes money in two ways. It charges an upfront license fee and also a royalty. The royalty is on a per chip basis. Every chip that contains ARM IP has a royalty associated with it. The royalty is typically 1 - 2% of the selling price of the chip.

Even if ARM dosn't actually buids chips, the statement that "the company expects to sell a whole lot of them." is still valid.

"ARM is preparing a new generation of microprocessors, and the company expects to sell a whole lot of them."

Them refers to microprocessors being sold, so no its not valid. I wast trying to nit pick it is just misleading. I had to go to ARM's site to see if they are making chips....

 

[targetdrone]

Something about this is how you get skynet.

 

[bit_user]

Them refers to microprocessors being sold, so no its not valid. I wast trying to nit pick it is just misleading. I had to go to ARM's site to see if they are making chips....

You're really splitting hairs, here.

I actually expected someone to jump on the way he's talking about "shipping units". Because "shipping" implies something very physical and it's their customers who do the actual shipping of actual units.

Anyway, I'm a bit disappointed by this big announcement that seems like it boils down to "hey, now you can mix cores within a cluster!". I know there's slightly more to it, than that.

I'm interested in seeing what smarts they put into improving the power-efficiency of their cache hierarchy. I've read that the cache hierarchy is a big power sink. If they can start pulling memories closer to the clusters, via stacking and in-package interposers, then perhaps they'll actually flatten the cache hierarchy a bit.

 

[bit_user]

Something about this is how you get skynet.

Why?

This article makes only a passing reference to machine learning or AI. I think the new architecture has very little to do with faster AI, and it's really the AI accelerators they building (that happen to fit within it) that will deliver the improvements.

 

[JamesSneed]

Them refers to microprocessors being sold, so no its not valid. I wast trying to nit pick it is just misleading. I had to go to ARM's site to see if they are making chips....

You're really splitting hairs, here.

I actually expected someone to jump on the way he's talking about "shipping units". Because "shipping" implies something very physical and it's their customers who do the actual shipping of actual units.

Anyway, I'm a bit disappointed by this big announcement that seems like it boils down to "hey, now you can mix cores within a cluster!". I know there's slightly more to it, than that.

I'm interested in seeing what smarts they put into improving the power-efficiency of their cache hierarchy. I've read that the cache hierarchy is a big power sink. If they can start pulling memories closer to the clusters, via stacking and in-package interposers, then perhaps they'll actually flatten the cache hierarchy a bit.

You say I'm nit picking but then go on to add to my case.

I had just picked one thing to point at and yes the shipping thing bothered me as well. I think the author of this article is very confused as other companies built processors based on ARM's design. ARM didn't make, ship or sell any actual physical item.

I agree this is mostly a pre-announcement saying we are working on this new thing that we called DynamicIQ that will allow you to mix big.little cores more granularity like say 1 big and 7 little etc. There is a bit more to it but that was the larger take way the rest is performance related and as such with no working product can be mostly ignored.

 

[bit_user]

I think the author of this article is very confused as other companies built processors based on ARM's design. ARM didn't make, ship or sell any actual physical item.

I think he gets it and was just using the terminology from the slides. Anyway, no one here seems confused. When I said you were splitting hairs, that was about your comment/downvote of @aldaia.