The company announced a major overhaul of its chip microarchitecture earlier
this week, one that could boost the processing capabilities of almost everything,
starting from smart baby monitors to Fitbits to the next iPhone. Called Dynamiq, it is more than 50 times faster than ARM's
existing architecture, which powers the current Cortex-A series of processors.
Should you care about your smartphone's processing power? ARM executives
point to the fact that smartphones and other devices of the future will be much
more smarter and more complex than today's crop of personal electronics, meaning
that they'll need immense processing power to tackle all of their artificial
intelligence algorithms. Even if the software was perfectly written and is
performed in the cloud, the device's own processor can still be a bottleneck.
And doing it on a device with today's processors will result in a problem
that anyone who's tried a long virtual reality gaming session with their Samsung
Gear VR $79.99 at Amazon probably experienced:
the phone will likely overheat and shut down. That is equivalent of the blue
screen of death might be little problem for gamers, but if it happened in a
self-driving car during ride, the consequences could be far more dire.
So the main goal of Dynamiq is specifically to offer more performance while
putting out less heat. It also can support AI and machine learning
accelerators, a new class of microprocessor that can handle all AI tasks while
the main processor powers the smartphone's conventional tasks, such as taking
photos or browsing the Internet. It's an evolution from ARM's philosophy, which
is about choosing the right processor for the right task.
ARM says Dynamiq will allow companies to certify their devices for the
stringent ASIL-D standard which is important part of the governs safety
protocols for self-driving cars.
New chips based on the new Dynamiq architecture will start showing up in
consumer devices as early as 2018, Nayampally said. The company estimates that around
100 billion ARM-based chips will be needed by 2021.