Andes Plays an ACE

Andes Plays an ACE
by Paul McLellan on 07-16-2014 at 9:01 am

There is a perception that ARM is the only microprocessor game in town due to their strong position in many markets, especially mobile. In areas where the instruction set shows through, then this is probably true. There is no rush to build smartphones where the application processor is something else. But even in a phone there are… Read More


Processors For Internet of Things

Processors For Internet of Things
by Paul McLellan on 05-06-2014 at 10:58 pm

Tomorrow and Thursday this week is the Internet of Things (IoT) developers conference. It takes place at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara. There are 3 keynotes and 3 CTO viewpoints:

  • Driving Heterogeneous System Architectures Everywhere – Amit Rohatgi, Imagination Technologies
  • Solving the Networking Puzzle: From IOT
Read More

Intel Lost $1B in Mobile Last Quarter

Intel Lost $1B in Mobile Last Quarter
by Paul McLellan on 04-16-2014 at 8:00 am

Intel announced their quarterly results today. Revenue was $12.8B, up 1% from a year ago with operating income of $2.5B also up 1% from last year.

Since the future of the world is mobile and not desktop/laptop, the mobile results are the most interesting. Mobile sales fell 61% to $156M. This includes mobile products and anything … Read More


ARM, Cadence and the Internet of Things

ARM, Cadence and the Internet of Things
by Paul McLellan on 03-20-2014 at 6:30 pm

There is clearly a lot of hype about the Internet of Things (IoT) right now, but also it is clear that it will be a real market. In fact, it already is with various medical, fitness and home-appliance products already available. At CES in January, wearables was probably the biggest trend. That doesn’t always pan out (3D TV was… Read More


Will Google Design Server SoCs?

Will Google Design Server SoCs?
by Beth Martin on 02-13-2014 at 12:22 pm

Google is search, of course, but it is also OS (Android), systems (Glass) and increasingly, maybe, hardware. Rumors are swirling that through careful acquisitions and focused internal development, Google is set to make its own server SoCs.

Google’s Larry Page has stated that they are in the hardware business. They’ve been making… Read More


ARM Announces A17

ARM Announces A17
by Paul McLellan on 02-11-2014 at 12:36 pm

It is microprocessors all the time right now, with Linley last week. Today ARM announced the next generation Cortex-A17 core. It is a development built on the Cortex-A12 core, itself built on A7 (which is the current volume leader). ARM says that it is 60% faster than the A7 core, although I’m sure a lot of that gain is a process… Read More


Raptor Image Signal Processor

Raptor Image Signal Processor
by Paul McLellan on 11-18-2013 at 9:00 am

This fall there seems to be a bumper harvest of cores. Today Imagination Technologies announced their latest core for image signal processing. Like all of their cores, it is designed to be part of an SoC and is designed to work with other Imagination cores to build a complete image processing system. In particular, it is designed … Read More


The Pelican Has Landed: Formal on an Unannounced ARM Processor

The Pelican Has Landed: Formal on an Unannounced ARM Processor
by Paul McLellan on 11-10-2013 at 3:00 pm

At the Jasper Users’ Group, Alex Netterville of ARM presented about how ARM are using formal on an unannounced processor code-named Pelican. Don’t read the presentation trying to find out information about Pelican itself, there isn’t any. That wasn’t the topic. Alex has been using formal approaches… Read More


Synopsys Creates a High-performance ARC Core

Synopsys Creates a High-performance ARC Core
by Paul McLellan on 11-05-2013 at 10:00 am

ARC is a family of configurable processors. Originally it was a standalone company in the UK (what is it with the UK and processor cores?) spun out from Argonaut Software. The A in ARC stood for Argonaut originally. ARC International was acquired by Virage and then Virage was acquired by Synopsys so now it is part of Synopsys Designware… Read More


Server Shift to ARM Becomes a Stampede

Server Shift to ARM Becomes a Stampede
by Paul McLellan on 10-19-2013 at 3:00 pm

I have been at the Linley Microprocessor Conference today. This is the one that is not about mobile: about servers, networking, base-stations. Probably the most important story about the whole industry is that the “shift to ARM becomes a stampede.”


In this market it seems to be driven by the 64-bit ARMv8 instruction… Read More