Gary Smith EDA Consulting in Electronic Design

Gary Smith EDA (GSEDA) is the leading provider of market intelligence and advisory services for the global Electronic Design Automation (EDA), Electronic System Level (ESL) design, and related technology markets.

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ARM TECHCON 2011 – The Week The World Changed

ARM TECHCON 2011 – The Week The World Changed

Ok, I’m exaggerating; this change has been going on for weeks. It’s just that going to ARM TechCon made the change obvious. By the time you left TechCon your view, one way or another, of mainstream computing had changed significantly. Either that or you weren’t paying attention.

The major topic of conversation was the A7, or the big:LITTLE model of computing. Of course big:LITTLE was introduced a week earlier at the A7 launch, but by TechCon the architecture had started to sink in. A month earlier NVIDIA had revealed the existence of a 5th Core in their newest design. Recently I had written that NVIDIA and ARM were on the leading edge of processor cluster based design, and now you know why.

The big surprise was ARM’s introduction of a 64 bit processor design. An even bigger surprise was that anyone was surprised. Of course the press built it up to be ARM and Intel mano e mano (man to man) battling it out in the great server war. They can’t seem to get their head around the fact that someday, and sooner than later, you will be walking around with a 64 bit processor in your pocket. Why not, if you look back a bit you’ll realize you already have a super computer in your pocket now.