Arm TechCon 2018 Keynote Live Blog (Starts at 1pm ET)
by Ryan Smith on October 16, 2018 12:55 PM EST01:05PM EDT - We're here at the San Jose Convention Center for Arm's annual developer conference and tech showcase, TechCon. Arm of course needs no introduction, and while the company is an IP provider rather than a hardware manufacturer, the net result is that they have their finger in everything from servers to embedded devices. Which has presented the company with a lot of growth opportunities, but also no shortage of competition as everyone works to grab a piece of these markets.
01:06PM EDT - The plan is for 3 mini-keynotes this morning. Starting with a keynote called The Fifth Wave of Computing
01:07PM EDT - Presented of course by Arm CEO Simon Segars
01:07PM EDT - Simon is starting us off with a history lesson of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace
01:10PM EDT - Babbage & Lovelace never saw the results of their efforts, but it did kick off a computing industry
01:10PM EDT - Mainframe to PCs to mobile & beyond. What comes next is the fifth wave
01:11PM EDT - The data-driven computing era
01:11PM EDT - Where there is a computer in every thing
01:12PM EDT - It's also no longer about the performance of a single system, but about the collective performance of all systems
01:14PM EDT - Now talking about a use case of micro-financing, and the kind of security required
01:15PM EDT - Getting to the fifth wave will not be without challenges though. If it's about network computing, then you need a reliable network that can handle many devices
01:15PM EDT - Enter 5G
01:16PM EDT - 5G will be faster, of course. But it will also handle large numbers of devices a lot better
01:17PM EDT - And what are the business opportunies that might arise from having such a capable network?
01:18PM EDT - Citing what's already been done with 2/3/4G, from American Idol to Netflix to Uber
01:18PM EDT - "5G is going to unleash creativity and opportunity for a lot of people"
01:19PM EDT - Arm wants to get to 1 trillion connected devices
01:20PM EDT - (This would be over 100 deivces/person)
01:20PM EDT - And these connected devices will need to be intelligent
01:24PM EDT - Now discussing a use case: pairing with a UK Children's Hospital to use smart edge devices to better control access and notify staff if someone is there who shouldn't be
01:26PM EDT - Next use case: cars
01:26PM EDT - Autonomous cars will be data centers on wheels. Generating many TBs per hour of data
01:27PM EDT - This is too much to upload elsewhere. It has to be processed at the edge, in the car
01:28PM EDT - (The slide transitions are at 60fps. nice!)
01:29PM EDT - Meanwhile servers/the cloud have to evolve as well
01:29PM EDT - Efficient. Low cost. Distributed.
01:30PM EDT - We're still very early in the days of IoT. But Arm thinks it will evolve quickly
01:30PM EDT - "What about security?"
01:31PM EDT - The tech sector needs to be trusted
01:32PM EDT - Talking about everyone's favorite exploits: Spectre and Meltdown
01:33PM EDT - Arm sees it as part of their mission to get everyone involved in making security better
01:34PM EDT - This is a challenge. How do you get skeptical devs on board? How do you communicate this to consumers and get them to pay for it?
01:36PM EDT - It will take collaboration and a complete ecosystem to make the Fifth Wave happen
01:38PM EDT - On to the next section, delivered by Marcelo Claure, COO of Softbank
01:39PM EDT - Talking about the growth of the IoT market
01:41PM EDT - 86% of IoT today is used to adhere to regulations or reduce costs
01:41PM EDT - So only 14% is being used to grow revenues
01:41PM EDT - But SoftBank expects IoT to start becoming disruptive
01:43PM EDT - Now rolling a video of a self-driving car on the streets of San Francisco
01:45PM EDT - Comparing and contrasting reactive vs. disruptive IoT
01:45PM EDT - Smart power meters versus smart thermometers, etc
01:46PM EDT - Home security systems with cameras and facial recognition
01:48PM EDT - SoftBank of course is also merging T-Mobile with Sprint. So they also have a hand in making the underlying 5G network for IoT a reality
01:48PM EDT - Planning to invest 40B dollars in the next few years on their 5G network
01:49PM EDT - Now on to SoftBank's vision for AI
01:51PM EDT - (This is all very high level/conceptual)
01:51PM EDT - SoftBank expects an AI revolution, and that it will occur much faster than any prior revolution
01:52PM EDT - And machines will have more processing capabilities than humans
01:54PM EDT - Now going into a hypothetical future day about how various SoftBank companies are using AI, and how it's helping to meet consumer needs
01:55PM EDT - Uber user load predictions, facial recognition to help with medical diagnosis, etc
01:58PM EDT - IoT is going to make life better for dogs as well
02:02PM EDT - (SoftBank's vision is very ambitious. Though this is starting to veer into an investment pitch)
02:03PM EDT - Ultimately everything SoftBank wants to do will require the IoT hardware to power it, and that is where Arm comes in
02:04PM EDT - And now on to part 3. Drew Henry, Arm's SVP & GM of their infrastructure business
02:05PM EDT - "Preparing the Cloud for the Fifth Wave of Computing"
02:05PM EDT - How will Arm evolve the cloud to support SoftBank's vision?
02:06PM EDT - Arm believes they have a unique understanding of what all of this will require, due to their current businesses and customers
02:07PM EDT - Starting with imaging sensors
02:08PM EDT - 1B HD image sensors will generate an enormous amount of data
02:09PM EDT - All of this would also require more than 40M servers. More than exist today
02:11PM EDT - Comparing the number of wafers used for various processor architectures
02:11PM EDT - "Other" in this case is x86
02:12PM EDT - Arm, for obvious reasons, sees themselves as a leader
02:13PM EDT - Arm is probably better known here for smartphones and other consumer devices. But they are also a major player in the infrastructure market. And proud of it
02:16PM EDT - The compute and networking model is changing. It's no longer about sending content to client devices, but having data come in from the world and in to the servers
02:19PM EDT - Arm believes that datacenters are spending too many CPU cycles - and thus money - on networking operations
02:20PM EDT - Arm of course has a solution, with their Cosmos hardware
02:21PM EDT - Arm doing the network processing. Arm doing the storage processing
02:21PM EDT - Arm is announcing a new initiative: Neoverse
02:22PM EDT - Cloud-to-edge infrastructure technologies
02:24PM EDT - Cosmos, Ares, Zeus, Poseidon
02:24PM EDT - All built on leading-edge nodes
02:24PM EDT - 30% per generation perf improvement
02:25PM EDT - And Arm being an IP provider, it will be up to partners to put this together and figure out what products the market needs
02:27PM EDT - Already putting together an ecosystem of silicon and service providers
02:28PM EDT - And of course, software support from all the usual suspects
02:30PM EDT - Neoverse for infrastructure, Cortex for edge devices
02:32PM EDT - Now talking about conference sessions over the next few days and how participants can get involved in Neoverse
02:32PM EDT - And that's a wrap. Thanks for joining us.
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