12:27PM EDT – I’m here at the Santa Clara Convention Center for ARM’s annual TechCon conference
12:27PM EDT – This year’s focus is expected to be on IoT devices
12:28PM EDT – Of particular interest, Masayoshi Son of ARM’s new owner Softbank will be speaking
12:29PM EDT – Softbank’s acquisiton of ARM still has an air of mystery to it. So hopefully we get a bit more insight here
12:30PM EDT – And here we go
12:31PM EDT – First up is Simon Segars, CEO of ARM
12:33PM EDT – ARM partners shipped 15B chips last year. About $50B in sales
12:34PM EDT – Big change for ARM this year is of course their buyout
12:34PM EDT – A deal that was closed in 7 weeks
12:35PM EDT – What’s it going to do for ARM? What’s it going to do for ARM’s partners?
12:37PM EDT – “But why is it that Softbank bought ARM?”
12:39PM EDT – Masayoshi Son
12:40PM EDT – He wastes no time in his opening statement, reiterating that ARM’s direction isn’t changing
12:43PM EDT – Son is opening up with a somewhat unconventional analogy between evolution, the first species with eyes, and sensors
12:45PM EDT – Biological sensing made a massive difference
12:46PM EDT – Just like the Cambrian explosion, there will be an IoT explosion
12:47PM EDT – So why buy ARM? Because this is the explosion of IoT, and Softbank wants to be there for it
12:49PM EDT – Billions and billions of IoT devices over the next 20 years
12:49PM EDT – Adding up to a trillion devices
12:50PM EDT – “Deep learning will make us super smart”
12:51PM EDT – But to have this IoT future, IoT devices need to be secure
12:51PM EDT – At this point it’s more important than performance
12:52PM EDT – Hundreds of chips in a modern car, with very little security. There is no encryption
12:55PM EDT – AI is already exceeding humans in some areas
12:56PM EDT – The Singularity
12:56PM EDT – (ed: Kurzweil’s dream)
12:57PM EDT – “Whether we like it or not, technology will evolve”
12:59PM EDT – We want to make life better for everyone. And this revolutioln cannot happen by just one company (e.g. ARM needs its partners)
12:59PM EDT – So no concrete details on tech, but a vision for why Softbank needs ARM
01:00PM EDT – Now Q&A time
01:01PM EDT – ARM partners already sells billions of microcontrollers, but what happens when they’re all connected?
01:04PM EDT – Son: “I do not intend to micromanage”
01:05PM EDT – Son is reiterating that he’s in this for the long haul. Decades, not quarters
01:10PM EDT – And that’s a wrap on the Q&A
01:11PM EDT – Now for a bit more of a tech focus
01:11PM EDT – ARM’s Future Technology Research Group will be presenting on the future of scaling
01:13PM EDT – Some people say 28nm was the best node ever. ARM agrees
01:13PM EDT – However right now we need multiple patterning, and that gets expensive
01:14PM EDT – Where do we go from here?
01:14PM EDT – What can we do besides finer pitches?
01:16PM EDT – Steppers are getting faster
01:17PM EDT – If we don’t get a good EUV tech for 5nm, there will be trouble
01:19PM EDT – Going below 5nm will be about materials engineering. A replacement for silicon
01:21PM EDT – Beyond transistors and wires. Find something better than SRAM
01:24PM EDT – A lot of these boosters are one-time tricks
01:24PM EDT – So are they worth it if it only helps once?
01:26PM EDT – ARM joined the IMEC consortium this year
01:28PM EDT – More discussion of what groups ARM is working with as of late on continuing Moore’s Law
01:29PM EDT – In summary, Moore’s Law will struggle with pitches. But scaling boosters can help keep things going
01:29PM EDT – (Chip design is about to get a lot less traditional)
01:32PM EDT – But on the plus side, scaling up until now is what has made IoT possible
01:32PM EDT – Final speaker for today is Mike Muller, ARM’s CTO
01:35PM EDT – Mike is focusing on wearables, and what they can be used for
01:36PM EDT – An interesting discussion given the recent news that smartwatch sales have taken a large hit this year
01:37PM EDT – Mike is reflecting on how things have changed for him in the last 16 years
01:39PM EDT – The medical field is a key change
01:39PM EDT – Now, how can modern IoT-type tech be used to improve this furter?
01:42PM EDT – Can you use recent research to detect cancer early and cheaply?
01:43PM EDT – More present day: using tiny sensors to measure inter-cranial pressure
01:47PM EDT – “There are 1001 vertical segments for IoT”
01:47PM EDT – “We are currently in the feature phone era”
01:48PM EDT – “The product works well, but it’s a vertically integrated solution”
01:48PM EDT – What’s coming next: the smartphone revolution for ioT
01:49PM EDT – Being announced today on the product side:
01:50PM EDT – Cortex-M23 and M33
01:50PM EDT – CrytoCell-312
01:50PM EDT – CoreLink SIE-200
01:51PM EDT – And Cordio, the link layer RTL for wireless communications
01:52PM EDT – nved Cloud: ARM’s software-as-a-service cloud infrastructure for IoT devices
01:52PM EDT – All with a focus on security and encryption
01:54PM EDT – Where does securitty meet privacy in IoT?
01:57PM EDT – Moving on, machine learning will change how data is correlated. Discovering correlations humans couldn’t find before
01:58PM EDT – “innovation is not always about technology”
01:59PM EDT – We need to provide seucirty. We need to work on privacy so that users trust us with the data
01:59PM EDT – And that’s a wrap. Off to some more Q&As
02:00PM EDT – 🙂
