ARM Announces Cortex-A35, mbed OS 3.0 at ARM TechCon 2015

Mike Muller, Chief Technology Officer of ARM, has announced the availability of Cortex-A35 processor core for low- to mid-range smartphones at the opening keynote of ARM TechCon on November 10, 2015 in Santa Clara, California. According to Muller, there are going to be 2.8 billion smartphones shipped this year, and more than one billion of them are heading to developing economies mostly using the entry-level smartphones.

It’s the latest member of ARM’s ultra-high-efficiency 64-bit processors family based on the ARMv8-A architecture. Cortex-A35 chips are targeted at mobile and embedded applications, and production silicon from ARM partners is expected to be available in late 2016. MediaTek is one of the first chipmakers adopting the Cortex-A35 processor that consumes nearly 33 percent less power per core and takes 25 percent less silicon area compared to the Cortex-A53 processor core.

Next, Muller announced the availability of mbed OS 3.0 and mbed Device Connector for the Internet of Things (IoT) service provisioning and authentication. He also explained how ARM is bringing TrustZone security hardware infrastructure to low-cost microcontrollers. ARM’s TrustZone technology, which has been part of the Cortex-A processors, will now be part of the Cortex-M processors targeted at embedded and IoT applications.

Mike Muller: ‘ARM server chips have arrived’

Muller also talked about ARM-based server chips. He said that ARM has been talking about server chips for two to three years, and the firm has been making inroads in the server market during this time. “We are at the cusp of transformation while shipping server chips for a number of manufacturers.”

Muller told the audience that arm.com is now running on ARM-based server chips. When asked what ARM brings to table for server chips, Muller’s answer was cost and diversity. He said that it’s not going to be a single server chip; instead, there will be a variety of chips, for instance, for high-performance computing (HPC), C-RAN, networking and storage, etc.

ARM is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its founding at the ARM TechCon 2015.