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Labor shortages in China as young people are much less willing to work under harsh working conditions–all this “compensated” for the time being with compulsory student labor required to get the graduation certificates

April 15, 2013 2:16 pm / 1 Comment on Labor shortages in China as young people are much less willing to work under harsh working conditions–all this “compensated” for the time being with compulsory student labor required to get the graduation certificates

After a similar situation three years ago Help wanted: China’s labor shortage [CNNMoney, March 8, 2010], just in eastern China:

As China’s economy improves, Chinese workers have better options and employers are struggling to find cheap labor.

now ODMs, component makers face labor shortages in western China [DIGITIMES, April 12, 2013]

Mainly because Taiwan-based notebook ODMs have been accelerating the process of shifting production to plants in Chongqing and Chengdu, in western China, the factories of ODMs and component makers in the region are seeing increasing difficulty recruiting enough workers, according to Taiwan-based supply chain makers.

Since the ODMs and related upstream suppliers are already facing labor shortages during the slow season (the first half) of 2013, the sources are concerned that the shortages will become more serious in the second half.

Acer’s 7-inch entry-level tablet is also suffering from unstable supply due to a labor shortage at component suppliers.

Quanta Computer plans to move all its notebook production except those for Apple, to its plants in Chongqing in 2013. Compal Electronics will shift 90% of its notebook capacity to Chongqing plants and will expand capacity in the second quarter.

Since people in western China are less willing to work in factories, the governments are mainly pushing student workers to aid the IT firms. Currently, about 50% of IT firms’ workers in Chongqing are students, and in Chengdu the proportion is 60-70%, the sources noted.

Since students in western China are required to conduct internship activities at factories in order to graduate, the governments can easily mobilize a large number of student workers to help IT firms. However, student workers’ high rates of absenteeism is causing the makers difficulties managing their production line manpower.

In addition, recruitment competition will also become a serious issue as the makers will need to offer attractive packages to draw people’s attention, but it will impact their profits, the sources said.

TheNewYorkTimes YouTube channel, published on Dec 27, 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtcQMFeNeTw

Hewlett Packard’s better practices which could be a model for others in the electronics industry [1:00 – 3:50], see also the related written report:

The factory [with 14,000 workers], in Chongqing, makes computers for Hewlett-Packard, a company with little of Apple’s glamour. It is operated by Quanta, a little-known Taiwanese manufacturer.
…
Neither Quanta nor Hewlett-Packard claims it has solved every labor woe. And the amenities are partly selfish: one of the biggest problems for Chinese factories is that workers are constantly leaving. Hewlett-Packard hopes that by improving living conditions, turnover and training costs will fall.

What changes Foxconn has made, and what challenges lie ahead as Foxconn and Apple say they are trying to improve working conditions? [4:23] See also the other parts of the related written report, Signs of Changes Taking Hold in Electronics Factories in China [The New York Times, Dec 26, 2012]:

With 1.4 million employees in China — the most of any private company — Foxconn is setting a bar that all manufacturers will be judged against, say executives at other companies.

“When the largest company raises wages and cuts hours, it forces every other factory to do the same thing whether they want to or not,” said Tony Prophet, a senior vice president at Hewlett-Packard. “A firestorm has started, and these companies are in the glare now. They have to improve to compete. It’s a huge change from just 18 months ago.”

…

Foxconn, more than any other company, has proved that Chinese plants can deliver obsessive attention to quality. The company has helped make China into a manufacturing juggernaut through strict discipline that is visible everywhere, even in the salutes managers give visiting executives. That discipline, say former Apple executives, is one reason every iPhone is put together so well. …

… Though Foxconn has trained managers to treat employees more gently, foremen still use profanity and intimidation, workers say. The managers speak in a manner that often feels like a threat,” said Mou Kezhang, who works in iPad quality assurance at the Foxconn factory in Chengdu [with 164,000 workers producing iPads for Apple out of 1.4 million employees in China].

Here is what was A typical work day for a Foxconn worker in Chengdu (animation only) [NMANewsDirect YouTube channel, May 10, 2011]

[Note the date, which is 2 years earlier!] This animation illustrates a routine day in the life of a Chinese worker working on an assembly line for the new iPad 2 at Apple supplier Foxconn’s two factories in Chengdu. According to a report by Hong Kong NGO Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, Foxconn workers must work 80 to 100 hours of overtime per month, in addition to 174 hours of regular work, to make ends meet. They earn an average of $186 per month.

Background report: Foxconn and Apple Fail to Fulfill Promises: Predicaments of Workers after the Suicides [Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, May 7, 2011]

FLA REPORT SHOWS SOME POLICY CHANGES AT FOXCONN BUT FEW IMPROVEMENTS FOR WORKERS [Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, Aug 24, 2012]

On 21 August, the Fair Labor Association (FLA) released a verification report on labour practices at three Foxconn factories producing for Apple in China that were the subject of an earlier FLA investigation. In its report, the FLA trumpets the speedy progress at Foxconn in remediating widespread labour rights violations. However the FLA has overstated the improvements at Foxconn. Firstly, most of the actions completed by Foxconn are changes at the policy level only, but few substantial changes in labour practices were found at this stage. Secondly, Foxconn has deliberately delayed implementing many of the actions called for in the remediation plan, even those that are almost cost-free. Thirdly, workers have had no opportunity to participate in the remedial action process. SACOM has repetitively demanded democratic trade unions at Foxconn as an indispensable step in reforming its labour practices.

…

Terry Gou always speaks proudly of “Foxconn-speed”. The world’s biggest IT manufacturer can build a factory in 76 days in Chengdu. When talking about legal compliance, however, Foxconn buys time by undertaking “gradual reform.” To be fair, SACOM agrees that some reforms take time to accomplish. However, it makes little sense that Foxconn is reluctant to immediately rectify some problems that do not require expenditure of much of the company’s considerable resources. For instance, Foxconn still refuses to deliver a copy of the collective bargaining agreement to workers, and workers are kept in the dark about the company’s remedial action plan.

SACOM reiterates that factory inspection alone cannot eliminate labour rights violations. A democratic trade union trusted by workers is the most sustainable solution towards decent working conditions.

Those Were the Years, When I Was at Foxconn 那些年, 我在富士康 [sacom2005 YouTube channel, Feb 24, 2013]

The video is an interview of a young female former Foxconn worker’s work and resistance at the mold production shop floor. She tells having entered Foxconn when she was 18 years old, at first earning just 1 Chinese yuan a day as trainee but actually working the same as other workers. The dusty environment and corrosive chemicals used put the workers’ health at risk but when injured, workers had to apologize in work meetings instead of getting proper treatment and compensation. Workers who stood up for better protection would be pressured to keep silent. Her testimony adds to the growing number of stories we hear, of young migrant workers being exploited. We are left to reflect: do we really understand the thousands of human faces behind the successful images and huge profits of those IT brands, including Apple?

Current situation: [OPEN LETTER TO APPLE’S SHAREHOLDERS] INFLUENCE APPLE WITH YOUR SHARES [Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, Feb 26, 2013]

Dear Apple’s shareholders,

On the eve of Apple’s annual shareholders meeting in the U.S., Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) and other labour organizations in Hong Kongcome to the Apple Store located in Causeway Bay, to protest against the Apple Inc. (Apple) conniving at suppliers’ harsh labour practices. Meanwhile, SACOM also take the opportunity appeal to shareholders to look squarely at Apple’s shameless infringement on labour rights. Apple shareholders should use their influential power to take part in governing Apple and to force the management to adhere to the labour rights standards.

Since 2005, Apple has released the Apple Supplier Code of Conduct stating that suppliers should comply with the international labour standards, and requesting that “Apple’s supply chain provides safe working conditions, respect workers, that they are treated with dignity”. SACOM, however, find Apple fails in its responsibilities which laid down in its Supplier Code of Conduct. To make sure that workers can meet the daily production targets, the management adopt a number of inhumane management methods. For instance, depriving workers’ legitimate rights to take toilet breaks, ergonomic breaks and meal breaks.

Apple joined the Fair Labor Association (FLA) in January 2012, but the labour rights abuses are still widespread in Apple’s supply chain.. At the end of 2012, SACOM conducted investigation in three Apple’s suppliers, Foxlink, Pegatron and Wintek. Similar to Foxconn, military-style management is adopted in the factories. Rampant labour rights violations including unpaid overtime work, long working hours, forced internship, excessive use of dispatch labour, poor occupational safety. The following is the voice from a Sichuan student who worked at the polishing department of Riteng for producing iPads.

“The production target is 5000 pieces per day. I am really exhausted…. I want to go back to the school, but my teacher said we would not receive our graduation certificates if we left.”

Apple always deploys its staff to monitor the on-site production process at its suppliers. Obviously, it knows very well on the non-compliance, but it keeps turning a blind eye to the problems. Apple’s net profit recorded at US$ 41.7 billion (about HK$ 325billion) last year. Yet, it still requires its suppliers to complete the production by urgent orders with a very low unit price and a short delivery time. Harsh management methods are inevitably adopted. Although Apple has been well-informed of these violations, it has intentionally neglected its corporate social responsibility. All these labour rights violations are incredibly shameful.

Shareholders, as the company’s investors, should bear the moral responsibility for the operation and purchasing practices of Apple, and monitor Apple to improve the labour practices at its suppliers. SACOM call on Apple’s shareholders to scrutinize the company to strictly enforce its commitment on its Code of Conduct and corporate social responsibility, that is:

to allow workers to form trade unions by democratic elections in accordance with the Chinese Trade Union Law;

to stop using student workers immediately;

to provide a living wage of all workers which enables workers to support themselves and their families;

to review management methods and to ensure workers are treated with respect and dignity;

to conduct labour rights training for workers, particularly training on occupational health and safety; and

to compensate victims for the non-compliance of the Apple’s Code of Conduct.

Yours faithfully,
Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour

Chongqing – the unofficial biggest city in the world [stefhoffer YouTube channel, March 3, 2012]

This clip gives an introduction into Chongqing, to some accounts the biggest city, or municipality, in the world. While the urban population nears 10 million, the entire municipality currently has close to 32 million inhabitants. The city provides an insight into the rapid urbanization currently taking place in China. Migrant workers flock from the countryside to work in cities, where wages are often higher than in rural areas. Nevertheless, most of them end up making extremely long work days. China’s government considers merging populations of large cities in belts of ‘super cities’. Chongqing would form one of the major parts of such an urban sprawl, which would stretch all the way to Shanghai. Copyright of all footage: Stef Hoffer Media

Downtown Chongqing (Part 1) 重庆市区 [Austin Guidry YouTube channel, March 29, 2013]

Me and my buddy Ryan visit downtown Chongqing. Chongqing’s pretty much a province, but there is a “downtown”, which is Chongqing proper. Interesting place! Like me on Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/letchinasleep2

Three views of Chengdu, China [globaltravel196 YouTube channel, Oct 15, 2012]

The footage was taken in and around Chengdu, China. A bustling metropolis in the southwest of China, yet when you take a step back and look at the Sichuan locals, they enjoy life and move at their own pace.

Commentary: Labor shortages, rising wages in China push notebook component firms toward automation [DIGITIMES, April 1, 2013]

China continues to increase minimum wages but labor shortages along the coast continue sending the notebook supply chain moving inward to central China. The lack of labor is notebook firms’ biggest problem currently and some brands have decided to work with component providers to build automated production lines. However, some other firms have noted that automation is difficult to achieve because currently there are no standards or rules to follow.

China’s wage levels continue to climb despite the slowdown of the global economy. According to statistics, since the beginning of 2013, seven major provinces and cities such as Beijing, Zhejiang, Henan, Shaanxi, Guizhou, Guangdong, and Shenzhen have all increased their minimum wages. Take Shenzhen for example, the minimum wage was increased from CNY1,500/month (US$241/month) to CNY1,600/month [US$257/month], the highest in China. As for minimum hourly wages, the highest is Beijing at CNY15.2/hour [US$2.4/hour].

Actually many firms have been paying their workers more than the minimum wages in order to secure their workforce, and in the past this usually happend in the coastal areas, such as Kunshan, Shanghai and Guangdong, where big firms and major manufacturing facilities were mostly located. Now this is also happening in inland areas, as firms move away from the coast looking for cheaper labor.

In the notebook supply chain, most firms such as Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics, Wistron, and Inventec are all gathered in Chongqing or Chengdu in central China, and this will raise the labor costs in those regions.

Some observers have noted that labor shortages in China are worsening because young workers are reluctant to enter the manufacturing sector. This will cause problems such as delayed shipments and increasing labor expenses.

Some component makers believe by upgrading to automated production process, the problems can be solved. Simplo, a Taiwan-based notebook battery provider which has a global market share of 20%, faces labor shortages during the boom season. The firm has been aggressive in increasing the percentage of automated production in recent years, which has helped the firm increase efficiency by 40%.

Notebook firms revealed that many in the supply chain were at first reluctant to move plants to Chongqing due to moving costs. They received subsidies from the local governments, but they know that it is not a long-term policy. Labor shortages and increasing labor costs will likely continue and firms may be forced to move again. Hence, automated production may be one of the solutions to this problem.

Foxconn reportedly to move production lines out of China [DIGITIMES, Feb 27, 2013]

Seeing that Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) has no plans to recruit standard workers in China, rumors have started circulating in the IT market that Foxconn is considering moving its investment focus from China to countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, Taiwan and the US.

Foxconn has declined to comment on the rumors, but some market watchers noted that China will still be an important investment target for the company in 2013, judging by the current market status.

Foxconn’s recent investments worldwide should not be regarded as moves out of China since the investments simply show the maker’s global market planning, the sources pointed out.

Although China’s rising labor costs and strict policies for environmental protection will gradually impact Foxconn’s profitability, compared to the US, Brazil and Indonesia, China currently still has advantages in terms of cost and infrastructure, the sources said.

Acer to shift 90% notebook production to Chongqing, China [DIGITIMES, March 1, 2013]

Acer recently decided to increase the percentage of notebook production in Chongqing, China to 90%, beginning in the second quarter of 2013, according to industry sources. Due to increasing production in Chongqing, as well as Chengdu (both being in western China), local supply of labor and components is expected to be tight.

As growth of the notebook industry slows down, ODM firms have been more sensitive to production cost changes. While scattered manufacturing plants mean higher production costs, the ODMs have been working towards centralizing their production. Nevertheless, brand clients have been more eager to diversify risks by issuing orders to plants in different locations. But the ODMs have managed to have Acer agree to shifting most of its production to western China.

HP has shifted production for most of its notebooks to Chongqing while Dell and Lenovo’s production mainly takes place in Chengdu. As for Acer, its major ODM partners Quanta Computer and Wistron have moved 100% of their notebook production capacity to Chongqing while Compal Electronics, which maintained 50% of capacity in Kunshan and 50% in Chongqing in 2012, will increase the proportion of capacity in Chongqing to 90% in 2013, the sources said, adding Compal will start moving its equipment in the second quarter.

With the exception of Apple products, Quanta’s notebook production for other brands will be moved to Chongqing, the sources said. To meet clients’ demand, Compal continues to have notebook production in Kunshan, Chengdu, Chongqing and Hefei. However, Compal’s Hefei plant is a joint venture with Lenovo and due to its location, production costs have been rising, and hence company president Ray Chen has disclosed plans to centralize capacity by moving production to the western regions in China. Compal’s Chengdu plant is predicted to ship more than 500,000 units per month in the second quarter and the Chongqing plant is expected to achieve the same figure starting in March and April.

The sources revealed that while notebook production will be concentrated in Chongqing and Chengdu, the ODMs will keep their tablet and server production lines in Shanghai, Songjiang, and Kunshan. Take Inventec for example, the firm plans to shift production focus at its Shanghai plant from notebooks to servers and all-in-one (AIO) PCs.

The centralization of notebook capacity in Chongqing and Chengdu has prompted component providers to consider moving production to the western regions of China as well.

The sources said the labor cost in inland China is relatively low compared to coastal regions but the transportation cost remains high. So far the cost difference in transportation has been subsidized by the local government but no one knows when the subsidy might end, the sources added.

According to statistics provided by the city government of Chongqing, export processing trade value increased 150% in 2012, reaching US$15.364 billion. Notebook exports reached 35.44 million units, an on-year growth of 130% with an export value of US$12.541 billion. Notebook export value accounted for almost 30% of total 2012 export value of Chongqing.

China’s Chongqing Plans 1.5 Trillion Yuan Investment: Xinhua [Xinhua via Bloomberg, Aug 20, 2012]

China’s southwestern municipality of Chongqing plans to boost industrial investment to 1.5 trillion yuan ($235.9 billion) in the five years through 2015, the official Xinhua News Agency said today, citing the local government.

The investment will help Chongqing expand its total industrial output beyond 3 trillion yuan, the report said.

China’s industrial-output growth unexpectedly slowed in July to a three-year low while investment and retail sales missed estimates, raising pressure on Premier Wen Jiabao to step up efforts to support expansion. Chongqing’s industrial investment plan will focus on building seven “big manufacturing industries,” including electronic information, automotive, equipment and parts manufacturing, oil refining, material and energy industries, according to Xinhua.

The electronic information manufacturing industry, which includes notebook computers, will receive 300 billion yuan [US$47.2 billion] in investment, while the car-manufacturing industry will receive 200 billion yuan, Xinhua said.

The equipment manufacturing sector will get an investment boost of 250 billion yuan, and Chongqing’s oil and ethylene refining sector will receive 150 billion yuan, the report said.

Chongqing consolidating IT role: Party chief [Xinhua, March 22, 2012]

CHONGQING, March 22 (Xinhua) — Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang, newly appointed Party chief of Chongqing, has promised unremitting efforts to consolidate the municipality’s role as a global leader in information technology.

Zhang told visiting Acer President Jim Wong on Wednesday that Chongqing would ensure “continuity and stability in its reform and opening-up policies” so as to make the drive.

Zhang was appointed Party chief of Chongqing, replacing Bo Xilai, under a decision by the Communist Party of China Central Committee last Thursday.

“Chongqing will diversify and optimize its policies to improve its opening-up,” Zhang said, while emphasizing the importance of upgrading vocational and technical education to train high-quality professionals for foreign-funded IT firms in Chongqing.

Wong and hundreds of other senior executives from the world’s leading IT firms including Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Intel have gathered in Chongqing to attend the China International Expo of Cloud Computing, which opened here Thursday.

The three-day event features symposiums and exhibitions of new IT technology, products and services.

Wong said Zhang’s reassurance helped enhance investors’ confidence.

He said the company plans to build Acer’s manufacturing base in Chongqing into the world’s largest communication technology research and manufacturing center in two to three years.

Taiwan-based Acer is the world’s largest vendor of completed PCs and notebooks. Acer’s plants in Chongqing, which only commenced business in December 2010, realized an output of 5 million notebooks in 2011.

In the year, 35 percent of Acer’s global notebook shipments were supplied from Chongqing. Meanwhile, rival HP plans to have 60-70 percent of its notebook shipments supplied from Chongqing in future.

Chongqing mayor Huang Qifan also met the entrepreneurs on Wednesday, saying the city has become home to the world’s five leading notebook producers and six vendors, as well 500 suppliers of the sector.

The city had a total output of 25 million notebooks in 2011 and is aiming for an annual output of 100 million of the products in three years.

Chongqing laptop output among top 3 nationwide [CQNEWS, Dec 17, 2012]

The output volume of laptops, printers and LCD screens in Chongqing is expected to be among the domestic top 3, only second to Shanghai and Jiangsu, according to Chongqing Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology.

Five global laptop brands including HP and Acer have established factories or placed big processing orders in Chongqing; while the world’s top 5 original equipment manufacturers like Inventec and Foxconn have also invested here. In addition, some 705 more laptop supporting enterprises gathered in the city too. The “5+6+700” industrial chain of the laptop sector has taken shape in Chongqing.

Statistics show that Chongqing produced more than 35 million laptops from January to October, 2012, up 99% year on year. According to the current momentum, Chongqing will see the total output volume of laptops, printers and LCD screens respectively hit 45 million, 9 million and 9 million in 2012, which will all rank among the top three in China.

Trans-Eurasia railway connects China with Europe [Abdi Ali YouTube channel, March 19, 2013]

The Yuxinou Railway connects China with Europe by crossing the vast Eurasian landmass. The 11,179 kilometer Yuxinou International Railway line, often referred to as the modern Silk Road, starts in Chongqing in southwest China, crosses the Alataw Pass into Kazakhstan, and then moves through Russia, Belarus and Poland before arriving in Duisburg, Germany. The railway started operations in 2011. Unlike on previous trips which only transported products from China to Europe, for the first time, products have been brought back from Europe to Chongqing on the line. After a 17-day journey, starting from Duisburg, Germany, and passing through five countries, this valuable shipment of vehicle components has finally arrived at the Changan Ford Chongqing factory in China’s southwest. Since 2011, the rail line has transported more than 2.5 billion US dollars worth of products from China to Europe. Deputy Director of Logistics Council of the Chongqing Gov’t, Yang Liqiong, said, “If the trains arrive empty, it does not help us in reducing transportation costs, then it’s not conducive for the formation of the global trade link.” The rail line is vital for foreign companies operating in Chongqing and for western China’s economic development. “This is a cost effective way to bring goods out of and in to Chongqing. So in terms of the scale, and efficiency, especially the goods devalue costs of time, it’s critical for the infrastructure of the development of Chongqing,” said Henley Travis, VP of HP Asia Operations. According to the Ministry of Commerce, in the first three quarters of 2012, trade between China and the EU reached about 420 billion US dollars. China has been relying on its advantages in labor and resources to export manufactured products to Europe. The Yu-Xin-Ou has given significant advantages to Chongqing and to the economic growth of western China. After 2 years in operation, the Yuxinou Railway system has resolved customs clearance of each country along the way. Regular service sets the scene for Chongqing to become the distribution center of European trade with China. Experts stress that they will be aiming to reduce the logistic costs to enhance the line’s economic value this year.

Rail linking Europe expected to open up China’s less-developed West [Xinhua, July 2, 2011]

CHONGQING, July 1 (Xinhua) — A cargo train filled with laptops and LCD screens has left Chongqing, a mega-city in China’s less-developed western regions, starting its 13-day trip to Duisburg, Germany, which marks the official launch of the new transcontinental rail freight route.

The new rail route witnessed its official opening on Thursday night, after three test runs since March last year.

Clattering out of the station at about 9 p.m., the cargo train is set to travel 11,179 kilometers across the far western Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, before finally reaching Germany.

The route offers a major shortcut to the more traditional sea trade routes from Shanghai and Guangzhou, cutting travel time to Europe from about 36 days by container ship to just 13 days by freight train, said Huang Qifan, mayor of the inland business hub.

Huang said that the train is also safer and less expensive than sea transport.

Though the rails have been there for over ten years, the route is new as no train services linking Chongqing and Europe have been provided before due to complicated customs checks and cargo transfers, according to Ma Zhongyuan, director of Chongqing customs.

Last year, China signed a strategic agreement with Russia and Kazakhstan to open the new freight route, as the country is trying to build the inland labor-rich municipality into an international high-tech hub, especially for laptops.

Foxconn, the world’s biggest contract electronics supplier, Acer, Taiwan’s leading computer maker, and Hewlett-Packard(HP) are already in place in Chongqing to produce laptops.

In the first five months this year, Chongqing sold 2.43 million laptop computers abroad. The exports were valued at 840 million U.S. dollars, accounting for 20 percent of the city’s total export value.

The city’s export of new- and high-tech products totaled 14.26 billion in the period, up 182.5 percent year-on-year.

Officials believe the shorter transport time to Europe by railway will make made-in Chongqing notebook computers more competitive.

Last month, a new cargo air route also became available between Chongqing and the European cities of Moscow and Luxembourg.

The province-sized city is already a major transport center at the junction of China’s prosperous East and poorer West, as cargo can be sent out of Chongqing along the Yangtze River, the country’s longest waterway,via air and railway.

The new rail route will be used to link south China’s Pearl River Delta manufacturing hub and the country’s southwest industrial belt with Europe, officials said.

Just last mouth, a rail route connecting Chongqing and a port in the southern manufacturing hub of Shenzhen went into operation.

The transcontinental track will also boost trade between southeast Asia and the Europe, as railways have already linked Chongqing with the southwestern border province of Yunnan and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, said Cai Jin, vice president of the China Logistics and Purchasing Association.

Currently, the train only leaves Chongqing for Duisburg once a month, but train services may be increased to once per day in the future as the city’s exports to Europe increase, according to Huang.

Related:

Freight rail across Eurasia cuts travel time for trading goods between China, Europe

CHONGQING, May 10 (Xinhua) — A new freight rail has started operating across Eurasia, linking the southwest Chinese economic hub of Chongqing with the Port of Antwerp in Belgium and cutting the travel time for goods traded between China and Europe in half, officials said Tuesday.

The 11,179 kilometers of rail, running through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, and Germany, was first used on March 19. Transporting goods from Chongqing to Antwerp on this route takes about 16 days, or half the time required for the goods to be transported by sea, Chongqing Mayor Huang Qifan told reporters. Full story

HP to continue with investments in China [Xinhua, Sept 23, 2010]

NEW YORK, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) — Hewlett-Packard Co. will expand its presence in China, Larry Irving, the company’s vice president for global government affairs, said on Wednesday.

“Our goal in China is to be a good partner in China, to bring more products to the Chinese market and to be a good employer as well,” Irving told Xinhua at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York.

HP’s presence in China began in 1981 with the opening of the first China HP representative office in Beijing. After years of solidifying business relationship, China Hewlett-Packard, the first high-tech joint venture in China, was established in 1985.

Nowadays, HP is the second-largest PC maker and a leading foreign PC vendor in China.

Earlier this year, to bolster its presence in China, HP joined hands with China’s Chongqing to announce a plan to operate a 20,000-square-meter facility in the city, where it will make state-of-the-art notebook and desktop PCs.

Irving said HP will continue to invest in China.

“We have private conversation with the Chinese government, about our particular circumstances,” he added. “HP’s presence has been grown in China. We are making more investment in China, not less investment in China. We see China as a great opportunity.”

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said last week that China is committed to building an open and fair business environment for foreign investors.

“All foreign enterprises registered in China enjoy national treatment,” Wen said in a speech at the opening ceremony of Summer Davos 2010 in Tianjin.

Chongqing, Chengdu among top investment destinations in China: U.S. businessmen [Xinhua, Feb 4, 2010]

NEW YORK, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) — The southwestern Chinese cities of Chongqing and Chengdu are among the best investment destinations in that country, several U.S. business executives agreed.

“Chongqing and Chengdu have such huge population centers, so they have greater opportunities than many other places,” David J. Hofmann, director for North America at Inter-China Consulting, told the China Investment Strategies Conference held here Wednesday.

Chongqing and Chengdu have enough labor forces to support the economic sector, especially some export-led industries, according to Hofmann, whohas 30-year business experience in China.

The two cities are also good places for innovators as they boast rich talent potentials, he added.

There are good universities and well-educated students in Chongqing and Chengdu who can play the operating and managing roles for investors’ companies, said the business executive.

Hofmann was echoed by Gene Huang, chief economist and vice president of FedEx, who said China’s strategy to develop its western regions is very supportive for doing business in Chongqing and Chengdu, which would remain attractive for U.S. investors “for quite some time.”

President and co-CEO of Tishman Speyer Rob Speyer also agreed that there are enormous government investments in the two cities.

State councilor stresses technological innovation for Chongqing’s development [Xinhua, April 9, 2010]

CHONGQING, April 9 (Xinhua) — State Councilor Liu Yandong has called for more efforts in scientific and technological innovation to boost development in China’s Chongqing Municipality.

Liu made the remarks during a recent inspection tour of Chongqing, the only municipality in China’s central and western regions.

She said innovation in science and technology is crucial to combat the financial crisis, optimize industrial structure, adjust the economic growth mode, and to achieve fast development.

Liu urged the municipality to make breakthroughs in its pillar industries, strive to foster technology-intensive burgeoning industries of strategic importance, speed up its building of a science and technology innovation center and an industrial base to apply scientific research to industrial production.

During her inspection, Liu visited schools, scientific research institutes, high-tech companies and cultural institutions.

Disposable income rises for Chongqing’s relocated urban residents in Three Gorges areas [Feb 21, 2010]

BEIJING, Feb. 21 (Xinhua) — Disposable income was at 8,231 yuan (1,205 U.S. dollars) per capita in 2009 for Chongqing’s urban residents relocated to make way for the Three Gorges project, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of China Sunday.

The figure was 11.5 percent up from the previous year, according to a statement on the NBS website.

The growth could mainly be attributed to the steady rise in salaries as the local government had taken measures to increase employment opportunities for relocated residents, according to the announcement.

Software defined server without Microsoft: HP Moonshot

April 10, 2013 11:41 pm / 2 Comments on Software defined server without Microsoft: HP Moonshot

Updates as of Dec 6, 2013 (8 months after the original post):

Martin Fink, CTO and Director of HP Labs, Hewlett-Packard Company [Oct 29, 2013]:

This Cloud, Social, Big Data and Mobile we are referring to as this “New Style of IT” [when talking about the slide shown above]

Through the Telescope: 3 Minutes on HP Moonshot [HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, July 24, 2013]

Steven Hagler (Senior Director, HP Americas Moonshot) provides insight on Moonshot, why it’s right for the market, and what it means for your business. http://hp.com/go/moonshot

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING:
– HP Offers Exclusive Peek Inside Impending Moonshot Servers [Enterprise Tech, Nov 26, 2013]: “The company is getting ready to launch a bunch of new server nodes for Moonshot in a few weeks”.
– So far, the most simple and understandable info is serviced in Visual Configuration Moonshot diagram set: http://www.goldeneggs.fi/documents/GE-HP-MOONSHOT-A.pdf This site includes also full visualisation for all x86 rack, desktop and blade servers.

From HP Launches Investment Solutions to Ease Organizations’ Transitions to “New Style of IT” [press release, Dec 6, 2013]

The HP accelerated migration program for cloud—helps …

The HP Pre-Provisioning Solution—lets …

New investment solutions for HP Moonshot servers and HP Converged Systems—provide customers and channel partners with quick access to the latest HP products through a simple, scalable and predictable monthly payment that aligns technology and financial requirements to business needs.

Access the world’s first software defined server [HP offering, Nov 27, 2013]
With predictable and scalable monthly payments

HP Moonshot Financing
Cloud, Mobility, Security and Big Data require a different level of technology efficiency and scalability. Traditional systems may no longer be able to handle the increasing internet workloads with optimal performance. Having and investment strategy that gives you access to newer technology such as HP Moonshot allows you to meet the requirements for the New Style of IT.

A simple and flexible payment structure can help you access the latest technology on your terms.

Why leverage a predictable monthly payment?
• Provides financial flexibility to scale up your business
• May help mitigate the financial risk of your IT transformation
• Enables IT refresh cycles to keep up with latest technology
• May help improve your cash flow
• Offers predictable monthly payments which can help you stay within budget

How does it work?
• Talk to your HP Sales Rep about acquiring HP Moonshot using a predictable monthly payment
• Expand your capacity easily with a simple add-on payment
• Add spare capacity needed for even greater agility
• Set your payment terms based on your business needs
• After an agreed term, you’ll be able to refresh your technology

From The HP Moonshot team provides answers to your questions about the datacenter of the future [The HP Blog Hub, as of Aug 29, 2013]

Q: WHAT IS THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEA BEHIND THE HP MOONSHOT SYSTEM?

A: The idea is simple—use energy-efficient CPU’s attuned to a particular application to achieve radical power, space and cost savings. Stated another way; creating software defined servers for specific applications that run at scale.

Q: WHAT IS INNOVATIVE ABOUT THE HP MOONSHOT ARCHITECTURE?

A: The most innovative characteristic of HP Moonshot is the architecture. Everything that is a common resource in a traditional server has been converged into the chassis. The power, cooling, management, fabric, switches and uplinks are all shared across 45 hot-pluggable cartridges in a 4.3U chassis.

…

Q: EXPLAIN WHAT IS MEANT BY “SOFTWARE DEFINED” SERVER

A: Software defined servers achieve optimal useful work per watt by specializing for a given workload: matching a software application with available technology that can provide the most optimal performance. For example, the firstMoonshot server is tuned for the web front end LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) stack. In the most extreme case of a future FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) cartridge, the hardware truly reflects the exact algorithm required.

Q: DESCRIBE THE FABRIC THAT HAS BEEN INTEGRATED INTO THE CHASSIS

A: The HP Moonshot 1500 Chassis has been built for future SOC designs that will require a range of network capabilities including cartridge to cartridge interconnect. Additionally, different workloads will have a range of storage needs.

There are four separate and independent fabrics that support a range of current and future capabilities; 8 lanes of Ethernet; storage fabric (6Gb SATA) that enable shared storage amongst cartridges or storage expansion to a single cartridge; a dedicated iLO management network to manage all the servers as one; a cluster fabric with point to point connectivity and low latency interconnect between servers.

Martin Fink, CTO and Director of HP Labs, Hewlett-Packard Company [Oct 29, 2013]:

We’ve actually announced three ARM-based cartridges. These are available in our Discovery Labs now, and they’ll be shipping next year with new processor technology. [When talking about the slide shown above.]

Calxeda Midway in HP Moonshot [Janet Bartleson YouTube channel, Oct 28, 2013]

HP’s Paul Santeler encourages you to test Calxeda’s Midway-based Moonshot server cartridges in the HP Discovery Labs. http://www.hp.com/go/moonshot http://www.calxeda.com

Details about the latest and future Calxeda SoCs see in the closing part of this Dec 7 update

@SC13: HP Moonshot ProLiant m800 Server Cartridge with Texas Instruments [Janet Bartleson YouTube channel, Nov 26, 2013]

@SC13, Texas Instruments’ Arnon Friedmann shows the HP ProLiant m800 Server Cartridge with 4 66K2H12 Keystone II SoCs each with 4 ARM Cortex A15 cores and 8 C66x DSP cores–alltogether providing 500 gigaflops of DSP performance and 8Gigabytes of data on the server cartridge. It’s lower power, lower cost than traditional servers.

Details about the latest Texas Instruments DSP+ARM SoCs see after the Calxeda section in the closing part of this Dec 7 update

The New Style of IT & HP Moonshot: Keynote by HP’s Martin Fink at ARM TechCon ’13 [ARMflix YouTube channel, recorded on Oct 29, published on Nov 11, 2013]

Keynote Presentation: The New Style of IT Speaker: Martin Fink, CTO and Director of HP Labs, Hewlett-Packard Company It’s an exciting time to be in technology. The IT industry is at a major inflection point driven by four generation-defining trends: the cloud, social, Big Data, and mobile. These trends are forever changing how consumers and businesses communicate, collaborate, and access information. And to accommodate these changes, enterprises, governments and fast growing companies desperately need a “New Style of IT.” Shaping the future of IT starts with a radically different approach to how we think about compute — for example, in servers, HP has a game-changing new category that requires 80% less space, uses 89% less energy, costs 77% less–and is 97% less complex. There’s never been a better time to be part of the ecosystem and usher in the next-generation of innovation.

From Big Data and the future of computing – A conversation with John Sontag [HP Enterprise 20/20 Blog, October 28, 2013]

20/20 Team: Where is HP today in terms of helping everyone become a data scientist?

John Sontag: For that to happen we need a set of tools that allow us to be data scientists in more than the ad hoc way I just described. These tools should let us operate productively and repeatably, using vocabulary that we can share – so that each of us doesn’t have to learn the same lessons over and over again. Currently at HP, we’re building a software tool set that is helping people find value in the data they’re already surrounded by. We have HAVEn for data management, which includes the Vertica data store, and Autonomy for analysis. For enterprise security we have ArcSight and ThreatCentral. We have our work around StoreOnce to compress things, and Express Query to allow us to consume data in huge volumes. Then we have hardware initiatives like Moonshot, which is bringing different kinds of accelerators to bear so we can actually change how fast – and how effectively – we can chew on data.

20/20 Team: And how is HP Labs helping shape where we are going?

John Sontag: One thing we’re doing on the software front is creating new ways to interrogate data in real time through an interface that doesn’t require you to be a computer scientist. We’re also looking at how we present the answers you get in a way that brings attention to the things you most need to be aware of. And then we’re thinking about how to let people who don’t have massive compute resources at their disposal also become data scientists.

20/20 Team: What’s the answer to that?

John Sontag: For that, we need to rethink the nature of the computer itself. If Moonshot is helping us make computers smaller and less energy-hungry, then our work on memristors will allow us to collapse the old processor/memory/storage hierarchy, and put processing right next to the data. Next, our work on photonics will help collapse the communication fabric and bring these very large scales into closer proximity. That lets us combine systems in new and interesting ways. And then we’re thinking about how to package these re-imagined computers into boxes of different sizes that match the needs of everyone from the individual to the massive, multinational entity. On top of all that, we need to reduce costs – if we tried to process all the data that we’re predicting we’ll want to at today’s prices, we’d collapse the world economy – and we need to think about how we secure and manage that data, and how we deliver algorithms that let us transform it fast enough so that you, your colleagues, and partners across the world can conduct experiments on this data literally as fast as we can think them up.

…

About John Sontag:

John Sontag is vice president and director of systems research at HP Labs. The systems research organization is responsible for research in memristor, photonics, physical and system architectures, storing data at high volume, velocity and variety, and operating systems. Together with HP business units and partners, the team reaches from basic research to advanced development of key technologies.

With more than 30 years of experience at HP in systems and operating system design and research, Sontag has had a variety of leadership roles in the development of HP-UX on PA-RISC and IPF, including 64-bit systems, support for multiple input/output systems, multi-system availability and Symmetric Multi-Processing scaling for OLTP and web servers.

Sontag received a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Meet the Innovators [HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, May 23, 2013]

Meet those behind the innovative technology that is HP Project Moonshot http://www.hp.com/go/moonshot

From Meet the innovators behind the design and development of Project Moonshot [The HP Blog Hub, June 6, 2013]

This video introduces you to key HP team members who were part of the team that brings you the innovative technology that fundamentally changes how hyperscale servers are built and operated such as:
• Chandrakant Patel – HP Senior Fellow and HP Labs Chief Engineer
• Paul Santeler – Senior Vice President and General Manager of the HyperScale Business Unit
• Kelly Pracht – Moonshot Hardware Platform Manager, HyperScale Business Unit
• Dwight Barron – HP Fellow, Chief Technologist, HyperScale Business Unit

From Six IT technologies to watch [HP Enterprise 20/20 Blog, Sept 5, 2013]

1. Software-defined everything

Over the last couple of years we have heard a lot about software defined networks (SDN) and more recently, software defined data center (SDDC). There are fundamentally two ways to implement a cloud. Either you take the approach of the major public cloud providers, combining low-cost skinless servers with commodity storage, linked through cheap networking. You establish racks and racks of them. It’s probably the cheapest solution, but you have to implement all the management and optimization yourself. You can use software tools to do so, but you will have to develop the policies, the workflows and the automation.

Alternatively you can use what is becoming known as “converged infrastructure,” a term originally coined by HP, but now used by all our competitors. Servers, storage and networking are integrated in a single rack, or a series of interconnected ones, and the management and orchestration software included in the offering, provides an optimal use of the environment. You get increased flexibility and are able to respond faster to requests and opportunities.

We all know that different workloads require different characteristics. Infrastructures are typically implemented using general purpose configurations that have been optimized to address a very large variety of workloads. So, they do an average job for each. What if we could change the configuration automatically whenever the workload changes to ensure optimal usage of the infrastructure for each workload? This is precisely the concept of software defined environments. Configurations are no longer stored in the hardware, but adapted as and when required. Obviously this requires more advanced software that is capable of reconfiguring the resources.

A software-defined data center is described as a data center where the infrastructure is virtualized and also delivered as a service. Control of the data center is automated by software – meaning hardware configuration is maintained through intelligent software systems. Three core components comprise the SDDC, server virtualization, network virtualization and storage virtualization. It remains to be said that some workloads still require physical systems (often referred to as bare metal), hence the importance of projects such as OpenStack’s Ironic which could be defined as a hypervisor for physical environments.

2. Specialized servers

As I mentioned, all workloads are not equal, but run on the same, general purpose servers (typically x86). What if we create servers that are optimized for specific workloads? In particular, when developing cloud environments delivering multi-tenant SaaS services, one could well envisage the use of servers specialized for a specific task, for example video manipulation, dynamic web service management. Developing efficient, low energy specialized servers that can be configured through software is what HP’s Project Moonshot is all about. Today, although still in its infancy, there is much more to come. Imagine about 45 server/storage cartridges linked through three fabrics (for networking, storage and high speed cartridge to cartridge interconnections), sharing common elements such as network controllers, management functions and power management. If you then build the cartridges using low energy servers, you reduce energy consumption by nearly 90%. If you build SaaS type environments, using multi-tenant application modules, do you still need virtualization? This simplifies the environment, reduces the cost of running it and optimizes the use of server technology for every workload.

Particularly for environments that constantly run certain types of workloads, such as analyzing social or sensor data, the use of specialized servers can make the difference. This is definitely an evolution to watch.

3. Photonics

Let’s now complement those specialized servers with photonic based connections enabling flat, hyper-efficient networks boosting bandwidth, and we have an environment that is optimized to deliver the complex tasks of analyzing and acting upon signals provided by the environment in its largest sense.

But technology is going even further. I talked about the three fabrics, over time; why not use photonics to improve the speed of the fabrics themselves, increasing the overall compute speed. We are not there yet, but early experiments with photonic backplanes for blade systems have shown overall compute speed increased up to a factor seven. That should be the second step.

The third step takes things further. The specialized servers I talked about are typically system on a chip (SoC) servers, in other words, complete computers on a single chip. Why not use photonics to link those chips with their outside world? On-chip lasers have been developed in prototypes, so we are not that far out. We could even bring things one step further and use photonics within the chip itself, but that is still a little further out. I can’t tell you the increase in compute power that such evolutions will provide you, but I would expect it to be huge.

4. Storage

Storage is at a crossroads. On the one hand, hard disk drives (HDD) have improved drastically over the last 20 years, both in reading speed and in density. I still remember the 20MB hard disk drive, weighing 125Kg of the early 80’s. When I compare that with the 3TB drive I bought a couple months ago for my home PC, I can easily depict this evolution. But then the SSD (solid state disk) has appeared. Where a HDD read will take you 4 ms, the SDD read is down at 0.05 ms.

Using nanotechnologies, HP Labs did develop prototypes of the Memristor, a new approach to data storage, faster than Flash memory and consumes way less energy. Such a device could store up to 1 petabit of information per square centimeter and could replace both memory and storage, speeding up access to data and allowing order of magnitude increase in the amount of data stored. Since HP has been busy preparing production of these devices. First production units should be available towards the end of 2013 or early in 2014. It will transform our storage approaches completely.

Details about the latest and future Calxeda SoCs:

Calxeda EnergyCore ECX-2000 family – ARM TechCon ’13 [ARMflix YouTube channel, recorded on Oct 30, 2013]

Calxeda tells us about their new EnergyCore ECX-2000 product line based on ARM Cortex-A15. http://www.calxeda.com/ecx-2000-family/

From ECX-2000 Product Brief [October, 2013]

The Calxeda EnergyCore ECX-2000 Series is a family of SoC (Server-on-Chip) products that delivers the power efficiency of ARM® processors, and the OpenStack, Linux, and virtualization software needed for modern cloud infrastructures. Using the ARM Cortex A15 quad-core processor, the ECX-2000 delivers roughly twice the performance, three times the memory bandwidth, and four times the memory capacity of the ground-breaking ECX-1000. It is extremely scalable due to the integrated Fleet Fabric Switch, while the embedded Fleet Engine simultaneously provides out-of-band control and intelligence for autonomic operation.

In addition to enhanced performance, the ECX-2000 provides hardware virtualization support via KVM and Xen hypervisors. Coupled with certified support for Ubuntu 13.10 and the Havana Openstack release, this marks the first time an ARM SoC is ready for Cloud computing. The Fleet Fabric enables the highest network and interconnect bandwidth in the MicroServer space, making this an ideal platform for streaming media and network-intensive applications.

The net result of the EnergyCore SoC architecture is a dramatic reduction in power and space requirements, allowing rapidly growing data centers to quickly realize operating and capital cost savings.

Scalability you can grow into. An integrated EnergyCore Fabric Switch within every SoC provides up to five 10 Gigabit lanes for connecting thousands of ECX-2000 server nodes into clusters capable of handling distributed applications at extreme scale. Completely topology agnostic, each SoC can be deployed to work in a variety of mesh, grid, or tree network structures, providing opportunities to find the right balance of network throughput and fault resiliency for any given workload.

…

Fleet Fabric Switch
• Integrated 80Gb (8×8) crossbar switch with through-traffic support
• Five (5) 10Gb external channels, three (3) 10Gb internal channels
• Configurable topology capable of connecting up to 4096 nodes
• Dynamic Link Speed Control from 1Gb to 10Gb to minimize power and maximize performance
• Network Proxy Support maintains network presence even with node powered off
• In-order flow delivery
• MAC learning provider support for virtualization
…

ARM Servers and Xen — Hypervisor Support at Hyperscale – Larry Wikelius, [Co-Founder of] Calxeda [TheLinuxFoundation YouTube channel, Oct 1, 2013]

[Xen User Summit 2013] The emergence of power optimized hyperscale servers is leading to a revolution in Data Center design. The intersection of this revolution with the growth of Cloud Computing, Big Data and Scale Out Storage solutions is resulting in innovation at rate and pace in the Server Industry that has not been seen for years. One particular example of this innovation is the deployment of ARM based servers in the Data Center and the impact these servers have on Power, Density and Scale. In this presentation we will look at the role that Xen is playing in the Revolution of ARM based server design and deployment and the impact on applications, systems management and provisioning.

Calxeda Launches Midway ARM Server Chips, Extends Roadmap [EnterpriseTech, Oct 28, 2013]

ARM server chip supplier Calxeda is just about to ship its second generation of EnergyCore processors for hyperscale systems and most of its competitors are still working on their first products. Calxeda is also tweaking its roadmap to add a new chip to its lineup, which will bridge between the current 32-bit ARM chips and its future 64-bit processors.

There is going to be a lot of talk about server-class ARM processors this week, particularly with ARM Holdings hosting its TechCon conference in Santa Clara.

A month ago, EnterpriseTech told you about the “Midway” chip that Calxeda had in the works and as well as its roadmap to get beefier 64-bit cores and extend its Fleet Services fabric to allow for more than 100,000 nodes to be linked together.

The details were a little thin on the Midway chip, but we now know that it will be commercialized as the ECX-2000, and that Calxeda is sending out samples to server makers right now. The plan is to have the ECX-2000 generally available by the end of the year, and that is why company is ready to talk about some feeds and speeds. Karl Freund, vice president of marketing at Calxeda, walked EnterpriseTech through the details.

The Midway chip is fabricated in the same 40 nanometer process as the existing “High Bank” ECX-1000 chip that Calxeda first put into the field in November 2011 in the experimental “Redstone” hyperscale servers from Hewlett-Packard. That 32-bit chip, based on the ARM Cortex-A9 core, was subsequently adopted in systems from Penguin Computing, Boston, and a number of other hyperscale datacenter operators who did proofs of concept with the chips. The ECX-1000 has four cores and was somewhat limited in its performance and was definitely limited in its main memory, which topped out at 4 GB across the four-core processor. But the ECX-2000 addresses these issues.

The ECX-2000 is based on ARM Holding’s Cortex-A15 core and has the 40-bit physical memory extensions, which allows for up to 16 GB of memory to be physically attached to each socket. With the 40-bit physical addressing added with the Cortex-A15, the memory controller can, in theory, address up to 1 TB of main memory; this is called Large Physical Address Extension (LPAE) in the ARM lingo, and it maps the 32-bit physical addressing on the core to a 40-bit virtual address space. Each core on the ECX-2000 has 32 KB of L1 instruction cache and 32 KB of L1 data cache, and ARM licensees are allowed to scale the L2 cache as they see fit. The ECX-2000 has 4 MB of L2 cache shared across the four cores on the die. These are exactly the same L1 and L2 cache sizes as used in the prior ECX-1000 chips.

The Cortex-A15 design was created to scale to 2.5 GHz, but as you crank up the clocks on any chip, the amount of energy consumed and heat radiated grows progressively larger as clock speeds go up. At a certain point, it just doesn’t make sense to push clock speeds. Moreover, every drop in clock speed gives a proportionately larger increase in thermal efficiency, and this is why, says Freund, Calxeda is making its implementation of the Cortex-A15 top out at 1.8 GHz. The company will offer lower-speed parts running at 1.1 GHz and 1.4 GHz for customers that need an even better thermal profile or a cheaper part where low cost is more important than raw performance or thermals.

What Calxeda and its server and storage array customers are focused on is the fact that the Midway chip running at 1.8 GHz has twice the integer, floating point, and Java performance of a 1.1 GHz High Bank chip. That is possible, in part, because the new chip has four times the main memory and three times the memory bandwidth as the old chip in addition to a 64 percent boost in clock speed. Calxeda is not yet done benchmarking systems using the chips to get a measure of their thermal efficiency, but is saying that there is as much as a 33 percent boost in performance per watt comparing old to new ECX chips.

The new ECX-2000 chip has a dual-core Cortex-A7 chip on the die that is used as a controller for the system BIOS as well as a baseboard management controller and a power management controller for the servers that use them. These Fleet Engines, as Calxeda calls them, eliminate yet another set of components, and therefore their cost, in the system. These engines also control the topology of the Fleet Services fabric, which can be set up in 2D torus, mesh, butterfly tree, and fat tree network configurations.

The Fleet Services fabric has 80 Gb/sec of aggregate bandwidth and offers multiple 10 Gb/sec Ethernet links coming off the die to interconnect server nodes on a single card, multiple cards in an enclosure, multiple enclosures in a rack, and multiple racks in a data center. The Ethernet links are also used to allow users to get to applications running on the machines.

Freund says that the ECX-2000 chip is aimed at distributed, stateless server workloads, such as web server front ends, caching servers, and content distribution. It is also suitable for analytics workloads like Hadoop and distributed NoSQL data stores like Cassandra, all of which tend to run on Linux. Both Red Hat and Canonical are cooking up commercial-grade Linuxes for the Calxeda chips, and SUSE Linux is probably not going to be far behind. The new chips are also expected to see action in scale-out storage systems such as OpenStack Swift object storage or the more elaborate Gluster and Ceph clustered file systems. The OpenStack cloud controller embedded in the just-announced Ubuntu Server 13.10 is also certified to run on the Midway chip.

Hewlett-Packard has confirmed that it is creating a quad-node server cartridge for its “Moonshot” hyperscale servers, which should ship to customers sometime in the first or second quarter of 2014. (It all depends on how long HP takes to certify the system board.) Penguin Computing, Foxconn, Aaeon, and Boston are expected to get beta systems out the door this year using the Midway chip and will have them in production in the first half of next year. Yes, that’s pretty vague, but that is the server business, and vagueness is to be expected in such a young market as the ARM server market is.

Looking ahead, Calxeda is adding a new processor to its roadmap, code-named “Sarita.” Here’s what the latest system-on-chip roadmap looks like now:

The future “Lago” chip is the first 64-bit chip that will come out of Calxeda, and it is based on the Cortex-A57 design from ARM Holdings –one of several ARMv8 designs, in fact. (The existing Calxeda chips are based on the ARMv7 architecture.)

Both Sarita and Lago will be implemented in TSMC’s 28 nanometer processes, and that shrink from the current 40 nanometer to 28 nanometer processes is going to allow for a lot more cores and other features to be added to the die and also likely a decent jump in clock speed, too. Freund is not saying at the moment which way it will go.

But what Freund will confirm is that Sarita will be pin-compatible with the existing Midway chip, meaning that server makers who adopt Midway will have a processor bump they can offer in a relatively easy fashion. It will also be based on the Cortex-A57 cores from ARM Holdings, and will sport four cores on a die that deliver about a 50 percent performance increase compared to the Midway chips.

The Lago chips, we now know, will scale to eight cores on a die and deliver about twice the performance of the Midway chips. Both Lago and Sarita are on the same schedule, in fact, and they are expected to tape out this quarter. Calxeda expects to start sampling them to customers in the second quarter of 2014, with production quantities being available at the end of 2014.

Not Just Compute, But Networking, Too

As important as the processing is to a system, the Fleet Services fabric interconnect is perhaps the key differentiator in its design. The current iteration of that interconnect, which is a distributed Layer 2 switch fabric that is spread across each chip in a cluster, can scale across 4,096 nodes without requiring top-of-rack and aggregation switches.

Both of the Lago and Sarita chips will be using the Fleet Services 2.0 intehttp://www.ti.com/product/66ak2h12rconnect that is now being launched with Midway. This iteration of the interconnect has all kinds of tweaks and nips and tucks but no scalability enhancements beyond the 4,096 nodes in the original fabric.

Freund says that the Fleet Services 3.0 fabric, which allows the distributed switch architecture to scale above 100,000 nodes in a flat network, will probably now come with the “Ratamosa” chips in 2015. It was originally – and loosely – scheduled for Lago next year. The circuits that do the fabric interconnect is not substantially different, says Freund, but the scalability is enabled through software. It could be that customers are not going to need such scalability as rapidly as Calxeda originally thought.

The “Navarro” kicker to the Ratamosa chip is presumably based on the ARMv9 architecture, and Calxeda is not saying anything about when we might see that and what properties it might have. All that it has said thus far is that it is aimed at the “enterprise server era.”

Details about the latest Texas Instruments DSP+ARM SoCs:

A Better Way to Cloud [MultiVuOnlineVideo YouTube channel, Nov 13, 2012]

To most technologists, cloud computing is about applications, servers, storage and connectivity. To Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NASDAQ: TXN) it means much more. Today, TI is unveiling a BETTER way to cloud with six new multicore System-on-Chips (SoCs). Based on its award winning KeyStone architecture, TI’s SoCs are designed to revitalize cloud computing, inject new verve and excitement into pivotal infrastructure systems and, despite their feature rich specifications and superior performance, actually reduce energy consumption. To view Multimedia News Release, go to http://www.multivu.com/mnr/54044-texas-instruments-keystone-multicore-socs-revitalize-cloud-applications

Infinite Scalability in Multicore Processors [Texas Instruments YouTube channel, Aug 27, 2012]

Over the years, our industry has preached how different types of end equipments and applications are best served by distinctive multicore architectures tailored to each. There are even those applications, such as high performance computing, which can be addressed by more than one type of multicore architecture. Yet most multicore devices today tend to be suited for a specific approach or a particular set of markets. This keynote address, from the 2012 Multicore Developer’s Conferece, touches upon why the market needs an “infinitely scalable” multicore architecture which is both scalable and flexible enough to support disparate markets and the varied ways in which certain applications are addressed. The speaker presents examples of how a single multicore architecture can be scalable enough to address the needs of various high performance markets, including cloud RAN, networking, imaging and high performance computing. Ramesh Kumar manages the worldwide business for TI’s multicore growth markets organization. The organization develops multicore processors and software that are targeted for the communication infrastructure space, including multimedia and networking infrastructure equipment, as well as end equipment that requires multicore processors like public safety, medical imaging, high performance computing and test and measurement. Ramesh is a graduate of Northeastern University, where he obtained an executive MBA, and Purdue University where he received a master of science in electrical engineering.

From Imagine the impact…TI’s KeyStone SoC + HP Moonshot [TI’s Multicore Mix Blog, April 19, 2013]

TI’s participation in HP’s Pathfinder Innovation Ecosystem is the first step towards arming HP’s customers with optimized server systems that are ideally suited for workloads such as oil and gas exploration, Cloud Radio Access Networks (C-RAN), voice over LTE and video transcoding. This collaboration between TI and HP is a bold step forward, enabling flexible, optimized servers to bring differentiated technologies, such as TI’s DSPs, to a broader set of application providers. TI’s KeyStone II-based SoCs, which integrate fixed- and floating- point DSP cores with multiple ARM® Cortex™A-15 MPCore processors, packet and security processing, and high speed interconnect, give customers the performance, scalability and programmability needed to build software-defined servers. HP’s Moonshot system integrates storage, networking and compute cards with a flexible interconnect, allowing customers to choose the optimized ratio enabling the industry’s first software-defined server platform. Bringing TI’s KeyStone II-based SoCs into HP’s Moonshot system opens up several tantalizing possibilities for the future. Let’s look at a few examples:

Think about the number of voice conversations happening over mobile devices every day. These conversations are independent of each other, and each will need transcoding from one voice format to another as voice travels from one mobile device, through the network infrastructure and to the other mobile device. The sheer number of such conversations demand that the servers used for voice transcoding be optimized for this function. Voice is just one example. Now think about video and music, and you can imagine the vast amount of processing required. Using TI’s KeyStone II-based SoCs with DSP technology provides optimized server architecture for these applications because our SoCs are specifically tuned for signal processing workloads.

Another example can be with C-RAN. We have seen a huge push for mobile operators to move most of the mobile radio processing to the data center. There are several approaches to achieve this goal, and each has pros and cons associated with them. But one thing is certain – each approach has to do wireless symbol processing to achieve optimum 3G or 4G communications with smart mobile devices. TI’s KeyStone II-based SoCs are leading the wireless communication infrastructure market and combine key accelerators such as BCP (Bit Rate Co-Processor), VCP (Viturbi Co-Processor) and others to enable 3G/4G standards compliant for wireless processing. These key accelerators offload standard-based wireless processing from the ARM and/or DSP cores, freeing the cores for value-added processing. The combination of ARM/DSP with these accelerators provides an optimum SoC for 3G/4G wireless processing. By combining TI’s KeyStone II-based SoC with HP’s Moonshot system, operators and network equipment providers can now build customized servers for C-RAN to achieve higher performance systems at lower cost and ultimately provide better experiences to their customers.

A better way to cloud: TI’s new KeyStone multicore SoCs [embeddednewstv YouTube channel, published on Jan 12,2013 (YouTube: Oct 21, 2013)]

Brian Glinsman, vice president of multicore processors at Texas Instruments, discusses TI’s new KeyStone multicore SoCs for cloud infrastructure applications. TI announced six new SoCs, based on their 28-nm KeyStone architecture, featuring the Industry’s first implementation of quad ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore processors and TMS320C66x DSPs for purpose built servers, networking, high performance computing, gaming and media processing applications.

Texas Instruments Offers System on a Chip for HPC Applications [RichReport YouTube channel, Nov 20, 2012]

In this video from SC12, Arnon Friedmann from Texas Instruments describes the company’s new multicore System-on-Chips (SoCs). Based on its award winning KeyStone architecture, TI’s SoCs are designed to revitalize cloud computing, inject new verve and excitement into pivotal infrastructure systems and, despite their feature rich specifications and superior performance, actually reduce energy consumption. “Using multicore DSPs in a cloud environment enables significant performance and operational advantages with accelerated compute intensive cloud applications,” said Rob Sherrard, VP of Service Delivery, Nimbix. “When selecting DSP technology for our accelerated cloud compute environment, TI’s KeyStone multicore SoCs were the obvious choice. TI’s multicore software enables easy integration for a variety of high performance cloud workloads like video, imaging, analytics and computing and we look forward to working with TI to help bring significant OPEX savings to high performance compute users.”

A better way to cloud: TI’s new KeyStone multicore SoCs revitalize cloud applications, enabling new capabilities and a quantum leap in performance at significantly reduced power consumption

Industry’s first implementation of quad ARM® Cortex™-A15 MPCore™ processors in infrastructure-class embedded SoC offers developers exceptional capacity & performance at significantly reduced power for networking, high performance computing and more
Unmatched combination of Cortex-A15 processors, C66x DSPs, packet processing, security processing and Ethernet switching, transforms the real-time cloud into an optimized high performance, power efficient processing platform
Scalable KeyStone architecture now features 20+ software compatible devices, enabling customers to more easily design integrated, power and cost-efficient products for high-performance markets from a range of devices

ELECTRONICA – MUNICH (Nov.13, 2012) /PRNewswire/ — To most technologists, cloud computing is about applications, servers, storage and connectivity. To Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NASDAQ: TXN) it means much more. Today, TI is unveiling a BETTER way to cloud with six new multicore System-on-Chips (SoCs). Based on its award winning KeyStone architecture, TI’s SoCs are designed to revitalize cloud computing, inject new verve and excitement into pivotal infrastructure systems and, despite their feature rich specifications and superior performance, actually reduce energy consumption.

To TI, a BETTER way to cloud means:

Safer communities thanks to enhanced weather modeling;
Higher returns from time sensitive financial analysis;
Improved productivity and safety in energy exploration;
Faster commuting on safer highways in safer cars;
Exceptional video on any screen, anywhere, any time;
More productive and environmentally friendly factories; and
An overall reduction in energy consumption for a greener planet.

TI’s new KeyStone multicore SoCs are enabling this – and much more. These 28-nm devices integrate TI’s fixed-and floating-point TMS320C66x digital signal processor (DSP) generation cores – yielding the best performance per watt ratio in the DSP industry – with multiple ARM® Cortex™-A15 MPCore™ processors – delivering unprecedented processing capability combined with low power consumption – facilitating the development of a wide-range of infrastructure applications that can enable more efficient cloud experiences. The unique combination of Cortex-A15 processors and C66x DSPcores, with built-in packet processing and Ethernet switching, is designed to efficiently offload and enhance the cloud’s first generation general purpose servers; servers that struggle with big data applications like high performance computing and video processing.

“Using multicore DSPs in a cloud environment enables significant performance and operational advantages with accelerated compute intensive cloud applications,” said Rob Sherrard, VP of Service Delivery, Nimbix. “When selecting DSP technology for our accelerated cloud compute environment, TI’s KeyStone multicore SoCs were the obvious choice. TI’s multicore software enables easy integration for a variety of high performance cloud workloads like video, imaging, analytics and computing and we look forward to working with TI to help bring significant OPEX savings to high performance compute users.”

TI’s six new high-performance SoCs include the 66AK2E02, 66AK2E05, 66AK2H06, 66AK2H12, AM5K2E02 and AM5K2E04, all based on the KeyStone multicore architecture. With KeyStone’s low latency high bandwidth multicore shared memory controller (MSMC), these new SoCs yield 50 percent higher memory throughput when compared to other RISC-based SoCs. Together, these processing elements, with the integration of security processing, networking and switching, reduce system cost and power consumption, allowing developers to support the development of more cost-efficient, green applications and workloads, including high performance computing, video delivery and media and image processing. With the matchless combination TI has integrated into its newest multicore SoCs, developers of media and image processing applications will also create highly dense media solutions.

“Visionary and innovative are two words that come to mind when working with TI’s KeyStone devices,” said Joe Ye, CEO, CyWee. “Our goal is to offer solutions that merge the digital and physical worlds, and with TI’s new SoCs we are one step closer to making this a reality by pushing state-of-the-art video to virtualized server environments. Our collaboration with TI should enable developers to deliver richer multimedia experiences in a variety of cloud-based markets, including cloud gaming, virtual office, video conferencing and remote education.”

Simplified development with complete tools and support

TI continues to ease development with its scalable KeyStone architecture, comprehensive software platform and low-cost tools. In the past two years, TI has developed over 20 software compatible multicore devices, including variations of DSP-based solutions, ARM-based solutions and hybrid solutions with both DSP and ARM-based processing, all based on two generations of the KeyStone architecture. With compatible platforms across TI’s multicore DSPs and SoCs, customers can more easily design integrated, power and cost-efficient products for high-performance markets from a range of devices, starting at just $30 and operating at a clock rate of 850MHz all the way to 15GHz of total processing power.

TI is also making it easier for developers to quickly get started with its KeyStone multicore solutions by offering easy-to-use, evaluation modules (EVMs) for less than $1K, reducing developers’ programming burdens and speeding development time with a robust ecosystem of multicore tools and software.

In addition, TI’s Design Network features a worldwide community of respected and well established companies offering products and services that support TI multicore solutions. Companies offering supporting solutions to TI’s newest KeyStone-based multicore SoCs include 3L Ltd., 6WIND, Advantech, Aricent, Azcom Technology, Canonical, CriticalBlue Enea, Ittiam Systems, Mentor Graphics, mimoOn, MontaVista Software, Nash Technologies, PolyCore Software and Wind River.

Availability and pricing

TI’s 66AK2Hx SoCs are currently available for sampling, with broader device availability in 1Q13 and EVM availability in 2Q13. AM5K2Ex and 66AK2Ex samples and EVMs will be available in the second half of 2013. Pricing for these devices will start at $49 for 1 KU.

66AK2H14 (ACTIVE) Multicore DSP+ARM KeyStone II System-on-Chip (SoC) [TI.com, Nov 10, 2013]
The same as below for 66AK2H12 SoC with addition of:

More Literature:

The Case for 10G Ethernet in Embedded Processing
(PDF , 189KB) 13 Nov 2013

From that the below excerpt is essential to understand the added value above 66AK2H12 SoC:

Figure 1. TI’s KeyStone™ 66AK2H14 SoC

The 66AK2H14 SoC shown in Figure 1, with the raw computing power of eight C66x processors and quad ARM Cortex-A15s at over 1GHz performance, enables applications such as very large fast fourier transforms (FFT) in radar and multiple camera image analytics where a 10Gbit/s networking connection is needed. There are, and have been, several sophisticated technologies that have offered the bandwidth and additional features to fill this role. Some such as Serial RapidIO® and Infiniband have been successful in application domains that Gigabit Ethernet could not address, and continue to make sense, but 10Gbit/s Ethernet will challenge their existence.

66AK2H12 (ACTIVE) Multicore DSP+ARM KeyStone II System-on-Chip (SoC) [TI.com, created on Nov 8, 2012]

Data~~sheet~~ manual [351 pages]:

66AK2H14/12/06 Multicore DSP+ARM KeyStone II System-on-Chip (SoC) (Rev. E) (PDF , 8763 KB) 14 Nov 2013

More Literature:

[Datasheet:] 66AK2Hx KeyStone Multicore DSP+ARM System-on-chips (Rev. A) (PDF , 193KB) 8 Nov 2013
Multicore DSPs for High-Performance Video Coding
(PDF , 245KB) 22 Jan 2013
Video Infrastructure – Applications of the K2E, K2H platforms
(PDF , 199KB) 9 Nov 2012
Industrial Imaging: Applications of the K2H and K2E platforms
(PDF , 515) 9 Nov 2012

Description

The 66AK2Hx platform is TI’s first to combine the quad ARM® Cortex™-A15 MPCore™ processors with up to eight TMS320C66x high-performance DSPs using the KeyStone II architecture. Unlike previous ARM Cortex-A15 devices that were designed for consumer products, the 66AK2Hx platform provides up to 5.6 GHz of ARM and 11.2 GHz of DSP processing coupled with security and packet processing and Ethernet switching, all at lower power than multi-chip solutions making it optimal for embedded infrastructure applications like cloud computing, media processing, high-performance computing, transcoding, security, gaming, analytics and virtual desktop. Using TI’s heterogeneous programming runtime software and tools, customers can easily develop differentiated products with 66AK2Hx SoCs.

Taking Multicore to the Next Level: KeyStone II Architecture [Texas Instruments YouTube channel, Feb 26, 2012]

TI’s scalable KeyStone II multicore architecture includes support for both TMS320C66x DSP cores and multiple cache coherent quad ARM Cortex™-A15 clusters, for a mixture of up to 32 DSP and RISC cores. With significant updates to its award-winning KeyStone architecture, TI is now paving the way for a new era of high performance 28-nm devices that meld signal processing, networking, security and control functionality, with KeyStone II. Ideal for applications that demand superior performance and low power, devices based on the KeyStone architecture are optimized for high performance markets including communications infrastructure, mission critical, test and automation, medical imaging and high performance and cloud computing. For more information, please visit http://www.ti.com/multicore.

Introducing the EVMK2H [Texas Instruments YouTube channel, Nov 15, 2013]

Introducing the EVMK2H evaluation module, the cost-efficient development tool from Texas Instruments that enables developers to quickly get started working on designs for the 66AK2H06, 66AK2H12, and 66AK2H14 multicore DSP + ARM devices based on the KeyStone architecture.

Kick start development of high performance compute systems with TI’s new KeyStone™ SoC and evaluation module [TI press release, Nov 14, 2013]

Combination of DSP + ARM® cores and high-speed peripherals offer developers an optimal compute solution at low power consumption

DALLAS, Nov. 14, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Further easing the development of processing-intensive applications, Texas Instruments (TI) (NASDAQ: TXN) is unveiling a new system-on-chip (SoC), the 66AK2H14, and evaluation module (EVM) for its KeyStone^TM-based 66AK2Hx family of SoCs. With the new 66AK2H14 device, developers designing high-performance compute systems now have access to a 10Gbps Ethernet switch-on-chip. The inclusion of the 10GigE switch, along with the other high-speed, on-chip interfaces, saves overall board space, reduces chip count and ultimately lowers system cost and power. The EVM enables developers to evaluate and benchmark faster and easier. The 66AK2H14 SoC provides industry-leading computational DSP performance at 307 GMACS/153 GFLOPS and 19600 DMIPS of ARM performance, making it ideal for a wide variety of applications such as video surveillance, radar processing, medical imaging, machine vision and geological exploration.

“Customers today require increased performance to process compute-intensive workloads using less energy in a smaller footprint,” said Paul Santeler, vice president and general manager, Hyperscale Business, HP. “As a partner in HP’s Moonshot ecosystem dedicated to the rapid development of new Moonshot servers, we believe TI’s KeyStone design will provide new capabilities across multiple disciplines to accelerate the pace of telecommunication innovations and geological exploration.”

Meet TI’s new 10Gbps Ethernet DSP + ARM SoC

TI’s newest silicon variant, the 66AK2H14, is the latest addition to its high-performance 66AK2Hx SoC family which integrates multiple ARM Cortex™-A15 MPCore™ processors and TI’s fixed- and floating-point TMS320C66x digital signal processor (DSP) generation cores. The 66AK2H14 offers developers exceptional capacity and performance (up to 9.6 GHz of cumulative DSP processing) at industry-leading size, weight, and power. In addition, the new SoC features a wide array of unique high-speed interfaces, including PCIe, RapidIO, Hyperlink, 1Gbps and 10Gbps Ethernet, achieving total I/O throughput of up to 154Gbps. These interfaces are all distinct and not multiplexed, allowing designers tremendous flexibility with uncompromising performance in their designs.

Ease development and debugging with TI’s tools and software

TI helps simplify the design process by offering developers highly optimized software for embedded HPC systems along with development and debugging tools for the EVMK2H – all for under $1,000. The EVMK2H features a single 66AK2H14 SoC, a status LCD, two 1Gbps Ethernet RJ-45 interfaces and on-board emulation. An optional EVM breakout card (available separately) also provides two 10Gbps Ethernet optical interfaces for 20Gbps backplane connectivity and optional wire rate switching in high density systems.

The EVMK2H is bundled with TI’s Multicore Software Development Kit (MCSDK), enabling faster development with production ready foundational software. The MCSDK eases development and reduces time to market by providing highly-optimized bundles of foundational, platform-specific drivers, optimized libraries and demos.

Complementary analog products to increase system performance

TI offers a wide range of power management and analog signal chain components to increase the system performance of 66AK2H14 SoC-based designs. For example, the TPS53xx integrated FET DC/DC converters provide the highest level of power conversion efficiency even at light loads, while the LM10011 VID converter with dynamic voltage control helps reduce system power consumption. The CDCM6208 low-jitter clock generator also eliminates the need for external buffers, jitter cleaners and level translators.

Availability and pricing

TI’s EVMK2H is available now through TI distribution partners or TI.com for $995. In addition to TI’s Linux distribution provided in the MCSDK, Wind River^® Linux is available now for the 66AK2Hxx family of SoCs. Green Hills^® INTEGRITY^® RTOS and Wind River VxWorks^® RTOS support will each be available before the end of the year. Pricing for the 66AK2H14 SoC will start at $330 for 1 KU. The 10Gbps Ethernet breakout card will be available from Mistral.

Ask the Expert: How can developers accelerate scientific computing with TI’s multicore DSPs? [Texas Instruments YouTube channel, Feb 7, 2012]

Dr. Arnon Friedmann is the business manager for TI’s high performance computing products in the multicore and media infrastructure business. In this video, he explains how TI’s multicore DSPs are well suited for computing applications in oil and gas exploration, financial modeling and molecular dynamics, where ultra- high performance, low power and easy programmability are critical requirements.

Ask the Expert: Arnon Friedmann [Texas Instruments YouTube channel, Sept 6, 2012]

How are TI’s latest multicore devices a fit for video surveillance and smart analytic camera applications? Dr. Arnon Friedmann, PhD, is a business manager for multicore processors at Texas Instruments. In this role, he is responsible for growing TI’s business in high performance computing, mission critical, test and measurement and imaging markets. Prior to his current role, Dr. Friedmann served as the marketing director for TI’s wireless base station infrastructure group, where he was responsible for all marketing and design activities. Throughout his 14 years of experience in digital communications research and development, Dr. Friedmann has accumulated patents in the areas of disk drive systems, ADSL modems and 3G/4G wireless communications. He holds a PhD in electrical engineering and bachelor of science in engineering physics, both from the University of California, San Diego.

End of Updates as of Dec 6, 2013

The original post (8 months ago):

HP Moonshot: Designed for the Data Center, Built for the Planet [HP press kit, April 8, 2013]

On April 8, 2013, HP unveiled the world’s first commercially available HP Moonshot system, delivering compelling new infrastructure economics by using up to 89 percent less energy, 80 percent less space and costing 77 percent less, compared to traditional servers. Today’s mega data centers are nearing a breaking point where further growth is restricted due to the current economics of traditional infrastructure. HP Moonshot servers are a first step organizations can take to address these constraints.

For more details on the disruptive potential of HP Moonshot, visit TheDisruption.com

Press Release: HP Launches New Class of Server for Social, Mobile, Cloud and Big Data

Introducing HP Moonshot [HewlettPackardVideos April 11, 2013]

See how HP is defining disruption with the introduction of HP Moonshot.

HP’s Cutting Edge Data Center Innovation [Ramón Baez, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of HP, HP Next [launched on April 2], April 10, 2013]

This is an exciting time to be in the IT industry right now. For those of you who have been around for a while — as I have — there have been dramatic shifts that have changed how businesses operate.

From the early days of the mainframes, to the explosion of the Internet and now social networks, every so often very important game-changing innovation comes along. We’re in the midst of another sea change in technology.

Inside HP IT, we are testing the company’s Moonshot servers. With these servers running the same chips found in smart phones and tablets, they are using incredibly less power, require considerably less cooling and have a smaller footprint.

We currently are running some of our intensive hp.com applications on Moonshot and are seeing very encouraging results. Over half a billion people will visit hp.com this year, and the new Moonshot technology will run at a fraction of the space, power and cost – basically we expect to run HP.com off of the same amount of energy needed for a dozen 60-watt light bulbs.

This technology will revolutionize data centers.

Within HP IT, we are fortunate in that over the past several years we have built a solid data center foundation to run our company. Like many companies, we were a victim of IT sprawl — with more than 85 data centers in 29 countries. We decided to make a change and took on a total network redesign, cutting our principle worldwide data centers down to six and housing all of them in the United States.

With the addition of four new EcoPODs to our infrastructure and these new Moonshot servers, we are in the perfect position to build out our private cloud and provide our businesses with the speed and quality of innovation they need.

Moonshot is just the beginning.The product roadmap for Moonshot is extremely promising and I am excited to see what we can do with it within HP IT, and what benefits our customers will see.

What Calxeda is saying about HP Moonshot [HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, April 8, 2013] which is best to start with for its simple and efficient message, as well as what Intel targeting ARM based microservers: the Calxeda case [‘Experiencing the Cloud’ blog, Dec 14, 2012] already contained on this blog earlier:

Calxeda discusses HP’s Project Moonshot and the cost, space, and efficiency innovations being enabled through the Pathfinder Innovation Ecosystem. http://hp.com/go/moonshot

Then we can turn to the Moonshot product launch by HP 2 days ago:

Note that the first three videos following here were released 3 days later, so don’t be surpised by YouTube dates, in fact the same 3 videos (as well as the “Introducing HP Moonshot” embedded above) were delivered on April 8 live webcast, see the first 18 minutes of that, and then follow according HP’s flow of the presentation if you like. I would certainly recommend my own presentation compiled here.

HP president and CEO Meg Whitman on the emergence of a new style of IT [HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, April 11, 2013]

HP president and CEO Meg Whitman outlines the four megatrends causing strain on current infrastructure and how HP Project Moonshot servers are built to withstand data center challenges.

EVP and GM of HP’s Enterprise Group Dave Donatelli discusses HP Moonshot [HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, April 11, 2013]

EVP and GM of HP’s Enterprise Group Dave Donatelli details how HP Moonshot redefines the server market.

Tour the Houston Discovery Lab — where the next generation of innovation is created [HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, April 11, 2013]

SVP and GM of HP’s Industry Standard Servers and Software Mark Potter and VP and GM of HP’s Hyperscale Business Unit Paul Santeler tour HP’s Discovery Lab in Houston, Texas. HP’s Discovery Lab allows customers to test, tune and port their applications on HP Moonshot servers in-person and remotely.

A new era of accelerated innovation [HP Moonshot minisite, April 8, 2013]

Cloud, Mobility, Security, and Big Data are transforming what the business expects from IT resulting in a “New Style of IT.” The result of alternative thinking from a proven industry leader, HP Moonshot is the world’s first software defined server that will accelerate innovation while delivering breakthrough efficiency and scale.

Watch the unveiling [link to HP Moonshot – The Disruption [HP Event registration page at ‘thedisruption.com’]

Products
Services & Support
Partners
Customers
Videos

On the right is the Moonshot System with the very first Moonshot servers (“microservers/server appliances” as called by the industry) based on Intel® Atom S1200 processors and for supporting web-hosting workloads (see also on right part of the image below). Currently there is also a storage cartridge (on the left of the below image) and a multinode for highly dense computing solutions (see in the hands of presenter on the image below). Many more are to come later on.

With up to a 180 servers inside the box (45 now) it was necessary to integrate network switching. There are two sockets (see left) for the network switch so you can configure for redundancy. The downlink module which talks to the cartridges is on left of the below image. This module is paired with an uplink module (see on the middle of the below image as taken out, and then shown with the uplink module on the right) that is in the back of the server. There will be more options available.

More information:
– Enterprise Information Library for Moonshot
– HP Moonshot System [Technical white paper from HP, April 5, 2013] from which I will include here the following excerpts for more information:

HP Moonshot 1500 Chassis

The HP Moonshot 1500 Chassis is a 4.3U form factor and slides out of the rack on a set of rails like a file cabinet drawer. It supports 45 HP ProLiant Moonshot Servers and an HP Moonshot-45G Switch Module that are serviceable from the top.

It is a modern architecture engineered for the new style of IT that can support server cartridges, server and storage cartridges, storage only cartridges and a range of x86, ARM or accelerator based processor technologies.

As an initial offering, the HP Moonshot 1500 Chassis is fully populated 45 HP ProLiant Moonshot Servers and one HP Moonshot-45G Switch Module and a second HP Moonshot-45G Switch Module can be purchased as an option. Future offerings will include quad server cartridges and will result in up to 180 servers per chassis. The 4.3U form factor allows for 10 chassis per rack, which with the quad server cartridge amounts to 1800 servers in a single rack.

The Moonshot 1500 Chassis simplifies management with four iLO processors that share management responsibility for the 45 servers, power, cooling, and switches.

…

Highly flexible fabric

Built into the HP Moonshot 1500 Chassis architecture are four separate and independent fabrics that support a range of current and future capabilities:

• Network fabric
• Storage fabric
• Management fabric
• Integrated cluster fabric

Network fabric

The Network fabric provides the primary external communication path for the HP Moonshot 1500 Chassis.

For communication within the chassis, the network switch has four communication channels to each of the 45 servers. Each channel supports a 1-GbE or 10-GbE interface. Each HP Moonshot-45G Switch Module supports 6 channels of 10GbE interface to the HP Moonshot-6SFP network uplink modules located in the rear of the chassis.

Storage fabric

The Storage fabric provides dedicated SAS lanes between server and storage cartridges. We utilize HP Smart Storage firmware found in the ProLiant family of servers to enable multiple core to spindle ratios for specific solutions. A hard drive can be shared among multiple server cartridges to enable low cost boot, logging, or attached to a node to provide storage expansion.

The current HP Moonshot System configuration targets light scale-out applications. To provide the best operating environment for these applications, it includes HP ProLiant Moonshot Servers with a hard disk drive (HDD) as part of the server architecture. Shared storage is not an advantage for these environments. Future releases of the servers thattarget different solutions will take advantage of the storage fabric.

Management fabric

We utilize the Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) standard in the HP ProLiant family of servers to provide the innovative management features in the HP Moonshot System. To handle the range of extreme low energy processors we provide a device neutral approach to management, which can be easily consumed by data center operators to deploy at scale.

The Management fabric enables management of the HP Moonshot System components as one platform with a dedicated iLO network. Benefits of the management fabric include:

• The iLO Chassis Manager aggregates data to a common set of management interfaces.
• The HP Moonshot 1500 Chassis has a single Ethernet port gateway that is the single point of access for the Moonshot Chassis manager.
• Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) and Serial Console for each server
• True out-of-band firmware update services
• SL-APM Rack Management spans rack or multiple racks

Integrated Cluster fabric

The Integrated Cluster fabric provides a high-speed interface among future server cartridge technologies that will benefit from high bandwidth node-to-node communication. North, south, east, and west lanes are provided between individual server cartridges.

The current HP ProLiant Moonshot Servertargets light scale-out applications. These applications do not benefit from the node-to-node communications, so the Integrated Cluster fabric is not utilized. Future releases of the cartridges that target different workloads that require low latency interconnects will take advantage of the Integrated Cluster fabric.

HP ProLiant Moonshot Server

HP will bring a growing library of cartridges, utilizing cutting-edge technology from industry leading partners. Each server will target specific solutions that support emerging Web, Cloud, and Massive-Scale Environments, as well as Analytics and Telecommunications. We are continuing server development for other applications, including Big Data, High-Performance Computing, Gaming, Financial Services, Genomics, Facial Recognition, Video Analysis, and more.

Figure 4. Cartridges target specific solutions

The first server cartridge now available is HP ProLiant Moonshot Server, which includes the Intel® Atom Processor S1260. This is a low power processor that is right-sized for the light workloads. It has dedicated memory and storage, with discrete resources. This server design is idealfor light scale-out applications. Light scale-out applications require relatively little processing but moderately high I/O and include environments that perform the following functions:

• Dedicated web hosting
• Simple content delivery

The HP ProLiant Moonshot Server can hot plug in the HP Moonshot 1500 Chassis. If service is necessary, it can be removed without affecting the other servers in the chassis. Table 1 defines the HP ProLiant Moonshot Server specifications.

Table 1. HP ProLiant Moonshot Server specifications

Processor

One Intel® Atom Processor S1260

Memory

8 GB DDR3 ECC 1333 MHz

Networking

Integrated dual-port 1Gb Ethernet NIC

Storage

500 GB or 1 TB HDD or SSD, non-hot-plug, small form factor

Operating systems

• Canonical Ubuntu 12.04
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2

With that HP CEO Seeks Turnaround Unveiling ‘Moonshot’ Super-Server: Tech [Bloomberg, April, 2013] as well as HP Moonshot: Say Goodbye to the Vanilla Server [Forbes, April 8, 2013]. HP however is much more eyeing the ARM based Moonshot servers which are expected to come later, because of the trends reflected on the left (source: HP). The software defined server concept is very general.

There are a number of quite different server cartridges expected to come, all specialised by server software installed on it. Typical specialised servers, for example, are the ones on which CyWee from Taiwan is working on with Texas Instruments’ new KeyStone II architecture featuring both ARM Cortex-A15 CPU cores and TI’s own C66x DSP cores for a mixture of up to 32 DSP and RISC cores in TI’s new 66AK2Hx family of SoCs, first of which is the TMS320TCI6636 implemented in 28nm foundry technology. Based on that CyWee will deliver multimedia Moonshot server cartridges for cloud gaming, virtual office, video conferencing and remote education (see even the first Keystone announcement). This CyWee involvement in HP Moonshot effort is part of HP’s Pathfinder Partner Program which Texas Instruments also joined recently to exploit a larger opportunity as:

TI’s 66AK2Hx family and its integrated c66x multicore DSPs are applicable for workloads ranging from high performance computing, media processing, video conferencing, off-line image processing & analytics, video recorders (DVR/NVR), gaming, virtual desktop infrastructure and medical imaging.

But Intel was able to win the central piece of the Moonshot System launch (originally initiated by HP as the “Moonshot Project” in November 2011 for disruption in terms of power and TCO for servers, actually with a Calxeda board used for research and development with other partners), at least as it was productized just two days ago:
Raejeanne Skillern from Intel – HP Moonshot 2013 – theCUBE [siliconangle YouTube channel]

Raejeanne Skillern, Intel Director of Marketing for Cloud Computing, at HP Moonshot 2013 with John Furrier and Dave Vellante

However ARM was not left out either just relegated in the beginning to highly advanced and/or specialised server roles with its SoC partners, and coming later in the year:

Applied Micro with networking and connectivity background having now the X-Gene ARM 64-bit Server on a Chip platform as well which features 8 ARM 64-bit high-performance cores developed from scratch according to an architecture license (i.e. not ARM’s own Cortex-A50 series core), clocked at up to 2.4GHz and also has 4 smaller cores for network and storage offloads (see AppliedMicro on the X-Gene ARM Server Platform and HP Moonshot [SiliconANGLE blog [April 9, 2013]). Sample reference boards to key customers were shipped in March (see Applied Micro’s cloud chip is an ARM-based, switch-killing machine [GigaOM, April 3, 2013]). In the latest X-Gene Arrives in Silicon [Open Compute Summit Winter 2013 presentation, Jan 16, 2013] video you can have the most recent strategic details (upto 2014 with FinFET implementation of a “Software defined X-Gene based data center components”, should be assumed that at 16nm). Here I will include a more product-oriented AppliedMicro Shows ARM 64-bit X-Gene Server on a Chip Hardware and Software [Charbax YouTube channel, Nov 3, 2012] overview video:

Vinay Ravuri, Vice President and General Manager, Server Products at AppliedMicro gives an update on the 64bit ARM X-Gene Server Platform. At ARM Techcon 2012, AppliedMicro, ARM and several open-source software providers gave updates on their support of the ARM 64-bit X-Gene Server on a Chip Platform.

More information: A 2013 Resolution for the Data Center [Applied Micro on Smart Connected Devices blog from ARM, Feb 4, 2013] about “plans from Oracle, Red Hat, Citrix and Cloudera to support this revolutionary architecture … Dell’s “Iron” server concept with X-Gene … an X-Gene based ARM server managed by the Dell DCS Software suite …” etc.
Texas Instruments with digital signal processing (DSP) background, as it was already presented above.
Calxeda with integration of storage fabric and Internet switching background, with details coming later, etc.:

This is what is empasized by Lakshmi Mandyam from ARM – HP Moonshot 2013 – theCUBE [siliconangle YouTube channel, April 8, 2013]

Lakshmi Mandyam, Director of Server Systems and Ecosystems, ARM, at HP Moonshot 2013, with John Furrier and Dave Vellante

She is also mentioning in the talk the achievements which could put ARM and its SoC partners into a role which Intel now has with its general Atom S1200 based server cartridge product fitting into the Moonshot system. Perspective information on that is already available on my ‘Experiencing the Cloud’ blog here:
– The state of big.LITTLE processing [April 7, 2013]
– The future of mobile gaming at GDC 2013 and elsewhere [April 6, 2013]
– TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process to be further optimised with Imagination’s PowerVR Series6 GPUs and Cadence design infrastructure [April 8, 2013]
– With 28nm non-exclusive in 2013 TSMC tested first tape-out of an ARM Cortex™-A57 processor on 16nm FinFET process technology [April 3, 2013]

The absence of Microsoft is even more interesting as AMD is also on this Moonshot bandwagon: Suresh Gopalakrishnan from AMD – HP Moonshot 2013 – theCUBE [siliconangle YouTube channel, April 8, 2013]

Suresh Gopalakrishnan, Vice President and General Manager, Server Business, AMD, at HP Moonshot 2013, with John Furrier and Dave Vellante

already showing a Moonshot fitting server cartridge with AMD’s four next-generation SoCs (while Intel’s already productized cartridge is not yet at an SoC level). We know from CES 2013 that AMD Unveils Innovative New APUs and SoCs that Give Consumers a More Exciting and Immersive Experience [press release, Jan 7, 2013] with the:

“Temash” … elite low-power mobility processor for Windows 8 tablets and hybrids … to be the highest-performance SoC for tablets in the market, with 100 percent more graphics processing performance² than its predecessor (codenamed “Hondo.”)

“Kabini” [SoC which] targets ultrathin notebooks with exceptional battery life and offers impressive levels of performance in both dual- and quad-core options. “Kabini” is expected to deliver an increase of more than 50 percent in performance³ over the previous generation of AMD essential computing APUs (codenamed “Brazos 2.0.”)

Both APUs are scheduled to ship in the first half of 2013

so AMD is really close to a server SoC to be delivered soon as well.

The “more information” sections which follow her are:

The Announcement
Software Partners
Hardware Partners

1. The Announcement

HP Moonshot [MultiVuOnlineVideo YouTube channel, April 8, 2013]

HP today unveiled the world’s first commercially available HP Moonshot system, delivering compelling new infrastructure economics by using up to 89 percent less energy, 80 percent less space and costing 77 percent less, compared to traditional servers. Today’s mega data centers are nearing a breaking point where further growth is restricted due to the current economics of traditional infrastructure. HP Moonshot servers are a first step organizations can take to address these constraints.

HP Launches New Class of Server for Social, Mobile, Cloud and Big Data [press release, April 8, 2013]

Software defined servers designed for the data center and built for the planet

… Built from HP’s industry-leading server intellectual property (IP) and 10 years of extensive research from HP Labs, the company’s central research arm, HP Moonshot delivers a significant improvement in energy, space, cost and simplicity. …

…

The HP Moonshot system consists of the HP Moonshot 1500 enclosure and application-optimized HP ProLiant Moonshot servers. These servers will offer processors from multiple HP partners, each targeting a specific workload.

With support for up to 1,800 servers per rack, HP Moonshot servers occupy one-eighth of the space required by traditional servers. This offers a compelling solution to the problem of physical data center space.⁽³⁾ Each chassis shares traditional components including the fabric, HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLo) management, power supply and cooling fans. These shared components reduce complexity as well as add to the reduction in energy use and space.

The first HP ProLiant Moonshot server is available with the Intel® Atom S1200 processor and supports web-hosting workloads. HP Moonshot 1500, a 4.3u server enclosure, is fully equipped with 45 Intel-based servers, one network switch and supporting components.

HP also announced a comprehensive roadmap of workload-optimized HP ProLiant Moonshot servers incorporating processors from a broad ecosystem of HP partners including AMD, AppliedMicro, Calxeda, Intel and Texas Instruments Incorporated.

Scheduled to be released in the second half of 2013, the new HP ProLiant Moonshot servers will support emerging web, cloud and massive scale environments, as well as analytics and telecommunications. Future servers will be delivered for big data, high-performance computing, gaming, financial services, genomics, facial recognition, video analysis and other applications.

…

The HP Moonshot system is immediately available in the United States and Canada and will be available in Europe, Asia and Latin America beginning next month.

Pricing begins at $61,875 for the enclosure, 45 HP ProLiant Moonshot servers and an integrated switch.⁽⁴⁾

…

⁽⁴⁾ Estimated U.S. street prices. Actual prices may vary.

More information:
– HP Moonshot System [Family data sheet, April 8, 2013]
– HP Moonshot – The Disruption [HP Event registration page at ‘thedisruption.com’ with embedded video gallery, press kit and more, originally created on April 12, 2010, obviously updated for the April 8, 2013 event]

Moonshot 101 [HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, April 8, 2013]

Paul Santeler, Vice President & GM of Hyperscale Business Unit at HP, discusses how HP Project Moonshot creates the new style of IT.http://hp.com/go/moonshot

Alert for Microsoft:

[4:42] We defined the industry standard server market [reference to HP’s Compaq heritage] and we’ve been the leader for years. With Moonshot we bring to find the market and taking it to the next level. [4:53]

People Behind HP Moonshot [HP YouTube channel, April 10, 2013]

HP Moonshot is a groundbreaking new class of server that requires less energy, less space and less cost. Built from HP’s industry-leading server IP and 10 years of research from HP Labs, HP Moonshot is an example of the best of HP working together. In the video: Gerald Kleyn, Director of Platform Research and Development, Hyperscale Business Unit, Industry Standard Servers; Scott Herbel, Worldwide Product Marketing Manager, Hyperscale Business Unit, Industry Standard Servers; Ron Mann, Director of Engineering, Industry Standard Servers; Kelly Pracht, Hardware Platform Manager R&D, Hyperscale Business Unit, Industry Standard Servers; Mike Sabotta, Distinguished Technologist, Hyperscale Business Unit, Industry Standard Servers; Dwight Barron, HP Fellow, Chief Technologist, Hyperscale Business Unit, Industry Standard Servers. For more information, visit http://www.hpnext.com.

HP Moonshot System Tour [HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, April 8, 2013]

Kelly Pracht, Moonshot Hardware Platform Program Manager, HP, takes you on a private tour of the HP Moonshot System and introduces the foundational HW components of HP Project Moonshot. This video guides you around the entire system highlighting the cartridges and switches.http://hp.com/go/moonshot

HP Moonshot System is Hot Pluggable [HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, April 8, 2013]

“Show me around the HP Moonshot System!” Vicki Doehring, Moonshot Hardware Engineer, HP, shows us just how simple and intuitive it is to remove components in the HP Moonshot System. This video explains how HP’s hot pluggable technology works with the HP Moonshot System.http://hp.com/go/moonshot

Alert for Microsoft: how and when will you have a system like this with all the bells and whistles as presented above, as well as the rich ecosystem of hardware and software partners given below

HP Pathfinder Innovation Ecosystem [HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, April 8, 2013]

A key element of HP Moonshot, the HP Pathfinder Innovation Ecosystem brings together industry leading sofware and hardware partners to accelerate the development of workload optimized applications. http://hp.com/go/moonshot

Software partners:

What Linaro is saying about HP Moonshot [HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, April 8, 2013]

Linaro discusses HP’s Project Moonshot and the cost, space, and efficiency innovations being enabled through the Pathfinder Innovation Ecosystem. http://hp.com/go/moonshot

Alert for Microsoft:

[0:11] In HP approach Linaro is about forming an enterprise group. What they were hoping for, what’s happened is to get a bunch of companies who are interested in taking the ARM architecture into the server space. [0:26]

Canonical joins Linaro Enterprise Group (LEG) and commits Ubuntu Hyperscale Availability for ARM V8 in 2013 [press release, Nov 1, 2012]

Canonical continues its leadership of commercial deployment for ARM-based servers through membership of Linaro Enterprise Group (LEG)
Ubuntu, the only commercially supported OS for ARM v7 today, commits to support ARM v8 server next year
Ubuntu extends its position as the natural choice for hyperscale server computing with long term support

… “Canonical has been supporting our work optimising and consolidating the Linux kernel since our founding in June 2010”, said George Grey, CEO of Linaro. “We’re very happy to welcome them as a member of the Linaro Enterprise Group, building on our relationship to help accelerate development of the ARM server software ecosystem.” …

… “Calxeda has been thrilled with Canonical’s leadership in developing the ARM ecosystem”, said Karl Freund, VP marketing at Calxeda. “These guys get it. They are driving hard and fast, already delivering enterprise-class code and support for Calxeda’s 32-bit product today to our mutual clients. Working together in LEG will enable us to continue to build on the momentum we have already created.” …

What Canonical is saying about HP Moonshot [HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, April 8, 2013]

HP Moonshot and Ubuntu work together [Ubuntu partner site, April 9, 2013]

… Ubuntu, as the lead operating system platform for x86 and ARM-based HP Moonshot Systems, featured extensively at the launch of the program in April 2013. …

… Ubuntu Server is the only OS fully operational today across HP Moonshot x86 and ARM servers, launched in April 2013.

Ubuntu is recognised as the leader in scale out and Hyperscale. Together, Canonical and HP are delivering massive reductions in data-center energy, space and costs. …

“Canonical has been working with HP for the past two years
on HP Moonshot, and with Ubuntu, customers can achieve higher performance with greater manageability across both x86 and ARM chip sets” Paul Santeler, VP & GM, Hyperscale Business Unit, HP

…

Ubuntu & HP’s project Moonshot [Canonical blog, Nov 2, 2011]

Today HP announced Project Moonshot – a programme to accelerate the use of low power processors in the data centre.

The three elements of the announcement are the launch of Redstone – a development platform that harnesses low-power processors (both ARM & x86), the opening of the HP Discovery lab in Houston and the Pathfinder partnership programme.

Canonical is delighted to be involved in all three elements of HP’s Moonshot programme to reduce both power and complexity in data centres.

The HP Redstone platform unveiled in Palo Alto showcases HP’s thinking around highly federated environments and Calxeda’s EnergyCore ARM processors. The Calxeda system on chip (SoC) design is powered by Calxeda’s own ARM based processor and combines mobile phone like power consumption with the attributes required to run a tangible proportion of hyperscale data centre workloads.

The promise of server grade SoC’s running at less than 5W and achieving per rack density of 2800+ nodes is impressive, but what about the software stacks that are used to run the web and analyse big data – when will they be ready for this new architecture?

Ubuntu Server is increasingly the operating system of choice for web, big data and cloud infrastructure workloads. Films like Avatar are rendered on Ubuntu, Hadoop is run on it and companies like Rackspace and HP are using Ubuntu Server as the foundation of their public cloud offerings.

The good news is that Canonical has been working with ARM and Calxeda for several years now and we released the first version of Ubuntu Server ported for ARM Cortex A9 class processors last month.

The Ubuntu 11.10 release (download) is an functioning port and over the next six months and we will be working hard to benchmark and optimize Ubuntu Server and the workloads that our users prioritize on ARM. This work, by us and by upstream open source projects is going to be accelerated by today’s announcement and access to hardware in the HP Discovery lab.

As HP stated today, this is beginning of a journey to re-inventing a power efficient and less complex data center. We look forward to working with HP and Calxeda on that journey.

The biggest enterprise alert for Microsoft because of what was discussed in Will Microsoft Stand Out In the Big Data Fray? [Redmondmag.com, March 22, 2013]: What NuoDB is saying about HP Moonshot [HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, April 9, 2013] especially as it is a brand new offering, see NuoDB Announces General Availability of Industry’s First & Only Cloud Data Management System at Live-Streamed Event [press release, Jan 15, 2013] now available in archive at this link: http://go.nuodb.com/cdms-2013-register-e.html

Barry Morris, founder and CEO of NuoDB discusses HP’s Project Moonshot and the database innovations delivered by the combined offering

Extreme density on HP’s Project Moonshot [NuoDB Techblog, April 9, 2013]

A few months ago HP came to us with something very cool. It’s called Project Moonshot, and it’s a new way of thinking about how you design infrastructure. Essentially, it’s a composable system that gives you serious flexibility and density.

A single Moonshot System is 4.3u tall and holds 45 independent servers connected to each other via 1-Gig Ethernet. There’s a 10-Gig Ethernet interface to the system as a whole, and management interfaces for the system and each individual server. The long-term design is to have servers that provide specific capabilities (compute, storage, memory, etc.) and can scale to up to 180 nodes in a single 4.3u chassis.

The initial system, announced this week, comes with a single server configuration: an Intel Atom S1260 processor, 8 Gigabytes of memory and either a 200GB SSD or a 500GB HDD. On its own, that’s not a powerful server, but when you put 45 of these into a 4.3 rack-unit space you get something in aggregate that has a lot of capacity while still drawing very little power (see below). The challenge, then, is how to really take advantage of this collection of servers.

NuoDB on Project Moonshot: Density and Efficiency

We’ve shown how NuoDB can scale a single database to large transaction rates. For this new system, however, we decided to try a different approach. Rather than make a single database scale to large volume we decided to see how many individual, smaller databases we could support at the same time. Essentially, could we take a fully-configured HP Project Moonshot System and turn it into a high-density, low-power, easy to manage hosting appliance.

To put this in context, think about a web site that hosts blogs. Typically, each blog is going to have a single database supporting it (just like this blog you’re reading). The problem is that while a few blogs will be active all the time, most of them see relatively light traffic. This is known as a long-tail pattern. Still, because the blogs always need to be available, so too the backing databases always need to be running.

This leads to a design trade-off. Do you map the blogs to a single database (breaking isolation and making management harder) or somehow try to juggle multiple database instances (which is hard to automate, expensive in resource-usage and makes migration difficult)? And what happens when a blog suddenly takes off in popularity? In other words, how do you make it easy to manage the databases and make resource-utilization as efficient as possible so you don’t over-spend on hardware?

As I’ve discussed on this blog NuoDB is a multi-tenant system that manages individual databases dynamically and efficiently. That should mean that we’re a perfect fit for this very cool (pun intended) new system from HP.

The Design

After some initial profiling on a single server, we came up with a goal: support 7,200 active databases. You can read all about how we did the math, but essentially this was a balance between available CPU, Memory, Disk and bandwidth. In this case a “database” is a single Transaction Engine and Storage Manager pair, running on one of the 45 available servers.

When we need to start a database, we pick the server that’s least-utilized. We choose this based on local monitoring at each server that is rolled up through the management tier to the Connection Brokers. It’s simple to do given all that NuoDB already provides, and because we know what each server supports it lets us calculate a single capacity percentage.

It gets better. Because a NuoDB database is made of an agile collection of processes, it’s very inexpensive to start or stop a database. So, in addition to monitoring for server capacity we also watch what’s going on inside each database, and if we think it’s been idle long enough that something else could use the associated resources more effectively we shut it down. In other words, if a database isn’t doing anything active we stop it to make room for other databases.

When an SQL client needs to access that database, we simply re-start it where there are available resources. We call this mechanism hibernating and waking a database. This on-demand resource management means that while there are some number of databases actively running, we can really support a much larger in total (remember, we’re talking about applications that exhibit a long-tail access pattern). With this capability, our original goal of 7,200 active databases translates into 72,000 total supported databases. On a single 4.3u System.

The final piece we added is what we call database bursting. If a single database gets really popular it will start to take up too many resources on a single server. If you provision another server, separate from the Moonshot System, then we’ll temporarily “burst” a high-activity database to that new host until activity dies down. It’s automatic, quick and gives you on-demand capacity support when something gets suddenly hot.

The Tests

I’m not going to repeat too much here about how we drove our tests. That’s already covered in the discussion on how we’re trying to design a new kind of benchmark focused on density and efficiency. You should go check that out … it’s pretty neat. Suffice it say, the really critical thing to us in all of this was that we were demonstrating something that solves a real-world problem under real-world load.

You should also go read about how we setup and ran on a Moonshot System. The bottom-line is that the system worked just like you’d expect, and gave us the kinds of management and monitoring features to go beyond basic load testing.

The Results

We were really lucky to be given access to a full Moonshot System. It gave us a chance to test out our ideas, and we actually were able to do better than our target. You can see this in the view from our management interface running against a real system under our benchmark load. You can see there that when we hit 7200 active databases we were only at about 70% utilization, so there was a lot more room to grow. Huge thanks to HP for giving us time on a real Moonshot System to see all those idea work!

Something that’s easy to lose track of in all this discussion is the question of power. Part of the value proposition from Project Moonshot is in energy efficiency, and we saw that in spades. Under load a single server only draws 18 Watts, and the system infrastructure is closer to 250 Watts. Taken together, that’s a seriously dense system that is using very little energy for each database.

Bottom Line

We were psyched to have the chance to test on a Moonshot System. It gave us the chance to prove out ideas around automation and efficiency that we’ll be folding into NuoDB over the next few releases. It also gave us the perfect platform to put our architecture through its paces and validate a lot about the flexibility of our core architecture.

We’re also seriously impressed by what we experienced from Project Moonshot itself. We were able to create something self-contained and easy to manage that solves a real-world problem. Couple that with the fact that a Moonshot System draws so little power, the Total Cost of Ownership is impressively low. That’s probably the last point to make about all this: the combination of our two technologies gave us something where we could talk concretely about capacity and TCO, something that’s usually hard to do in such clear terms.

In case it’s not obvious, we’re excited. We’ve already been posting this week about some ideas that came out of this work, and we’ll keep posting as the week goes on. Look for the moonshot tag and please follow-up with comments if you’re curious about anything specific and would like to hear more!

Project Moonshot by the Numbers [NuoDB Techblog, April 9, 2013]

To really understand the value from HP Project Moonshot you need to think beyond the list price of one system and focus instead on the Total Cost of Ownership. Figuring out the TCO for a server running arbitrary software is often a hard (and thankless?) task, so one of the things we’ve tried to do is not just demonstrate great technology but something that naturally lets you think about TCO in a simple way. We think the final metrics are pretty simple, but to get there requires a little math.

Executive Summary

If you’re a CIO, and just want to know the bottom line, then we’ll ruin the suspense and cut to the chase. It will cost you about $70,500 up-front, $1,800 in your first year’s electricity bills and take 8.3 rack-units to support the web-front end and database back-end for 72,000 blogs under real-world load.

Cost of a Single Database

Recall that we set the goal at 72,000 databases within a single system. At launch the list price for a fully-configured Moonshot System is around $60,000, so we start out at 83 cents per-database. In practice were seeing much higher capacity in our tests, but let’s start with this conservative number.

Now consider the power used by the system. From what we’ve measured through the iLO interfaces a single server draws no more than 18 Watts at peak load (measured against CPU and IO activity). The System itself (fans, switches etc.) draws around 250 Watts in our tests. That means that under full load each database is drawing about .015 Watts.

NuoDB is a commercial software offering, which means that you pay up-front to deploy the software (and get support as part of that fee). For anyone who wants to run a Moonshot System in production as a super-dense NuoDB appliance we’ll offer you a flat-rate license.

Put together, we can say that the cost per database-watt is 1.22 cents. That’s on a 4.3 rack-unit system. Awesome.

Quantify the Supported Load

As we discussed in our post on benchmarking, we’re trying to test under real-world load. As a simple starting-point we chose a profile based on WordPress because it’s fairly ubiquitous and has somewhat serious transactional requirements. In our benchmarking discussion we explain that a typical application action (post, read, comment) does around 20 SQL operations.

Given 72,000 databases most of these are fairly inactive, so on average we’ll say that each database gets about 250 hits a day (generous by most reports I’ve seen). That’s 18,000,000 hits a day or 208 hits per-second. 4,166 SQL statements a second isn’t much for a single database, but it’s pretty significant given that we’re spreading it across many databases some of which might have to be “woken” on-demand.

HP was generous enough not only to give us time on a Moonshot System but also access to some co-located servers for driving our load tests. In this case, 16 lower-powered ARM-based Calxeda systems that all went through the same 1-Gig ethernet connection to our Moonshot System. These came from HP’s Discovery Lab; check out our post about working with the Moonshot System for more details.

From these load-drivers we able to run our benchmark application with up to 16 threads per server, simulating 128 simultaneous clients. In this case a typical “client” would be a web server trying to respond to a web client request. We averaged around 320 hits per-second, well above the target of 208. From what we could observe, we expect that given more capable network and client drivers we would be able to get 3 or 4 times that rate easily.

Tangible Cost

We have the cost of the Moonshot System itself. We also know that it can support expected load from a fairly small collection of low-end servers. In our own labs we use systems that cost around $10,000, fit in 3 rack-units and would be able to drive at least the same kind of load we’re citing here. Add a single switch at around $500 and you have a full system ready to serve blogs. That’s $70,500 total in 8.3 rack units, still under $1 per database.

I don’t know what power costs you have in your data center, but I’ve seen numbers ranging from 2.5 to 25 cents per Kilowatt-Hour. In our tests, where we saw .015 Watts per-database, if you assume an average rate of 13.75 cents per KwH that comes out to .00020625 cents per-hour per-database in energy costs. In one year, with no down-time, that would cost you $1,276.77 in total electricity fees.

Just as an aside, according to the New York Times, Facebook uses around 60,000,000 Watts a year!

One of the great things about a Moonshot System is that the 45 servers are already being switched inside the chassis. This means that you don’t need to buy switches & cabling, and you don’t need to allocate all the associated space in your racks. For our systems administrator that alone would make him very happy.

Intangible Cost

What I haven’t been talking about in all of this are the intangible costs. This is where figuring out TCO becomes harder.

For instance, one of the value-propositions here is that the Moonshot System is a self-contained, automated component. That means that systems administrators are freed up from the tasks of figuring out how to allocate and monitor databases, and how to size the data-center for growth. Database developers can focus more easily on their target applications. CIOs can spend less time staring at spreadsheets … or, at least, can allocate more time to spreadsheets on different topics.

Providing a single number in terms of capacity makes it easy to figure out what you need in your datacenter. When a single server within a Moonshot System fails you can simply replace it, and in the meantime you know that the system will still run smoothly just with slightly lower capacity. From a provisioning point of view, all you need to figure out is where your ceiling is and how much stand-by capacity you need to have at the ready.

NuoDB by its nature is dynamic, even when you’re doing upgrades. This means that you can roll through a running Moonshot System applying patches or new versions with no down-time. I don’t know how you calculate the value in saved cost here, but you probably do!

Comparisons and Planned Optimizations

It’s hard to do an “apples-to-apples” comparison against other database software here. Mostly, this is because other databases aren’t designed to be dynamic enough to support hibernation, bursting and capacity-based automated balancing. So, you can’t really get the same levels of density, and a lot of the “intangible” cost benefits would go away.

Still, to be fair, we tried running MySQL on the same system and under the same benchmarks. We could indeed run 7200 instances, although that was already hitting the upper-bounds of memory/swap. In order to get the same density you would need 10 Moonshot Systems, or you would need larger-powered expensive servers. Either way, the power, density, automation and efficiency savings go out the window, and obviously there’s no support for bursting to more capable systems on-demand.

Unsurprisingly, the response time was faster on-average (about half the time) from MySQL instances. I say “unsurprisingly” for two reasons. First, we tried to use schema/queries directly from WordPress to be fair in our comparison, and these are doing things that are still known to be less-optimized in NuoDB. They’re also in the path of what we’re currently optimizing and expect to be much faster in the near-term.

The second is that NuoDB clients were originally designed assuming longer-running connections (or pooled connections) to databases that always run with security & encryption enabled. We ran all of our tests in our default modes to be fair. That means we’re spending more time on each action setting up & tearing down a connection. We’ve already been working on optimizations here that would shrink the gap pretty substantially.

In the end, however, our response time is still on the order of a few hundred milliseconds worst-case, and is less important than the overall density and efficiency metrics that we proved out. We think the value in terms of ease of use, density, flexibility on load spikes and low-cost speaks for itself. This setup is inexpensive by comparison to deploying multiple servers and supports what we believe is real-world load. Just wait until the next generation of HP Project Moonshot servers roll out and we can start scaling out individual databases at the same time!

More information:
– Benchmarking Density & Efficiency [NuoDB Techblog, April 9, 2013]
– Database Hibernation and Bursting [NuoDB Techblog, April 8, 2013]
– An Enterprise Management UI for Project Moonshot [NuoDB Techblog, April 9, 2013]Regarding the cloud based version of NuoDB see:
– NuoDB Partners with Amazon [press release, March 26, 2013]
– NuoDB Extends Database Leadership in Scalability & Performance on a Private Cloud [press release, March 14, 2013] “… the industry’s first and only patented, elastically scalable Cloud Data Management System (CDMS), announced performance of 1.84 million transactions per second (TPS) running on 32 machines. … With NuoDB Starlings release 1.0.1, available as of March 1, 2013, the company has made advancements in performance and scalability and customers can now experience 26% improvement in TPS per machine.”
– Google Compute Engine: interview with NuoDB [GoogleDevelopers YouTube channel, March 21, 2013]

Meet engineers from NuoDB: an elastically scalable SQL database built for the cloud. We will learn about their approach to distributed SQL databases and get a live demo. We’ll cover the steps they took to get NuoDB running on Google Compute Engine, talk about how they evaluate infrastructure (both physical hardware and cloud), and reveal the results of their evaluation of Compute Engine performance.

Actually Calxeda was best to explain the preeminence of software over the SoC itself:
Karl Freund from Calxeda – HP Moonshot 2013 – theCUBE [siliconangle YouTube channel, April 8, 2013], see also HP Moonshot: It’s a lot closer than it looks! [Calxeda’s ‘ARM Servers, Now!’ blog, April 8, 2013]

Karl Freund, VP of Marketing, Calxeda, at HP Moonshot 2013 with John Furrier and Dave Vellante.

as well as ending with Calxeda’s very practical, gradual approach to ARM based served market with things like:

[16.03] Our 2nd generation platform called Midway, which will be out later this year [in the 2nd half of the year], that’s probably the target for Big Data. Our current product is great for web serving, it’s great for media serving, it’s great for storage. It doesn’t have enough memory for Big Data … in a large. So we’ll getting that 2nd generation product out, and that should be a really good Big Data platform. Why? Because it’s low power, it’s low cost, but it’s also got a lot of I/O. Big Data is all that moving a lot of data around. And if you do that more cost effectively you save a lot of money. [16:38]

mentioning also that their strategy is using standard ARM cores like the Cortex-A57 for their H1 2014 product, and focus on things like the fabric and the management, which actually allows them to work with a streamlined staff of around 150 people.

Detailed background about Calxeda in a concise form:
– Redeﬁning Datacenter Efficiency: An Overview of Calxeda’s architecture and early performance measurements [Karl Freund, Nov 12, 2012] from where the core info is:

Founded in 2008
$103M Funding
1st Product Announced with HP, Nov 2011
Initial Shipments in Q2 2012
Volume production in Q4 2012

* The power consumed under normal operating conditions
under full application load (ie, 100% CPU utilization)

A small Calxeda Cluster: a Simple Example
• Start with four ServerNodes
• Consumes only 20W total power
• Connected via distributed fabric switches
• Connect up to 4 SATA drives per node
• Then scale this to thousands of ServerNodes

EnergyCard: a Quad-Node Reference Design

Four-node reference platform from Calxeda
Available as product and/or design
Plugs into OEM system board with passive fabric, no additional switch HW
EnergyCard delivers 80Gb Bandwidth to the system board. (8 x 10Gb links)

It is also important to have a look at what were the Open Source Software Packages for Initial Calxeda Shipments [Calxeda’s ‘ARM Servers, Now!’ blog, May 24, 2012]

We are often asked what open-source software packages are available for initial shipments of Calxeda-based servers.

Here’s the current list (changing frequently). Let us know what else you need!

Then Perspectives From Linaro Connect [Calxeda’s ‘ARM Servers, Now!’ blog, March 20, 2013] sheds more light on the recent software alliances which make Calxeda to deliver:

– From Larry Wikelius, Co-Founder and VP Ecosystems, Calxeda:

The most recent Linaro Connect (Linaro Connect Asia 2013 – LCA), held in Hong Kong the first week of March, really put a spotlight on the incredible momentum around ARM based technology and products moving into the Data Center. Yes – you read that correctly – the DATA CENTER!

When Linaro was originally launched almost three years ago the focus was exclusively on the mobile and client market – where ARM has and continues to be dominant. However, as Calxeda has demonstrated, the opportunity for the ARM architecture goes well beyond devices that you carry in your pocket. Calxeda was a key driver in the formation of the Linaro Enterprise Group (LEG), which was publicly launched at the previous LinaroConnect event in Copenhagen in early November, 2012.

LEG has been an exciting development for Linaro and now has 13 member companies that include server vendors such as Calxeda, Linux distribution companies Red Hat and Canonical, OEM representation from HP and even Hyperscale Data Center end user Facebook. There were many sessions throughout the week that focused on Server specific topics such as UEFI, ACPI, Virtualization, Hyperscale Testing with LAVA and Distributed Storage. Calxeda was very active throughout the week with the team participating directly in a number of roadmap definition sessions, presenting on Server RAS and providing guidance in key areas such as application optimization and compiler focus for Servers.

Linaro Connect is proving to be a tremendous catalyst for the the growing eco-system around the ARM software community as a whole and the server segment in particular. A great example of this was the keynote presentation given jointly by Mark Heath and Lars Kurth from Citrix on Tuesday morning. Mark is the VP of XenServer at Citirix and Lars is well know in the OpenSource community for his work with Xen. The most exciting announcement coming out of Mark’s presentation is that Citrix will be joining Linaro as a member of LEG. Citrix will be certainly prove to be another valuable member of the Linaro team and during the week attendees were able to appreciate how serious Citrix is about supporting ARM servers. The Xen team has not only added full support for ARM V7 systems in the Xen 4.3 release but they have accomplished some very impressive optimizations for the ARM platform. The Xen team has leveraged Device Tree for optimal device discovery. Combined with a number of other code optimizations they showed a dramatically smaller code base for the ARM platform. We at Calxeda are thrilled to welcome Citrix into LEG!

As an indication of the draw that the Linaro Connect conference is already having on the broader industry the Open Compute Project (OCP) held their first International Event co-incident with LCA at the same venue. The synergy between Linaro and OCP is significant with the emphasis on both organizations around Open Source development (one software and one hardware) along with the dramatically changing design points for today’s Hyperscale Data Center. In fact the keynote at LCA on Wednesday morning really put a spotlight on how significant this is likely to be. Jason Taylor, Director of Capacity Engineering and Analysis at Facebook, presented on Facebook’s approach to ARM based servers. Facebook’s consumption of Data Center equipment is quite stunning – Jason quoted from Facebook’s 10-Q filed in October 2012 which stated that “The first nine months of 2012 … $1.0 billion for capital expenditures” related to data center equipment and infrastructure. Clearly with this level of investment Facebook is extremely motivated to optimize where possible. Jason focused on the strategic opportunity for ARM based severs in a disaggregated Data Center of the future to provide lower cost computing capabilities with much greater flexibility.

Calxeda has been very active in building the Server Eco-System for ARM based servers. This week in Hong Kong really underscored how important that investment has become – not just for Calxeda but for the industry as a whole. Our commitment to Open Source software development in general and Linaro in particular has resulted in a thriving Linux Infrastructure for ARM servers that allows Calxeda to leverage and focus on key differentiation for our end users. The Open Compute Project, which we are an active member in and have contributed to key projects such as the Knockout Storage design as well as the Open Slot Specification, demonstrates how the combination of an Open Source approach for both Software and Hardware can compliment each other and can drive Data Center innovation. We are early in this journey but it is very exciting!

Calxeda will continue to invest aggressively in forums and industry groups such as these to drive the ARM based server market. We look forward to continue to work with the incredibly innovative partners that are members in these groups and we are confident that more will join this exciting revolution. If you are interested in more information on these events and activities please reach out to us directly at info@calxeda.com.

The next Linaro Connnect is scheduled for early July in Dublin. We expect more exciting events and topics there and hope to see you there!

They are also referring on their blog to Mobile, cloud computing spur tripling of micro server shipments this year [IHS iSuppli press release, Feb 6, 2013] which showing the general market situation well into the future as:

Driven by booming demand for new data center services for mobile platforms and cloud computing, shipments of micro servers are expected to more than triple this year, according to an IHS iSuppli Compute Platforms Topical Report from information and analytics provider IHS (NYSE: IHS).

Shipments this year of micro servers are forecast to reach 291,000 units, up 230 percent from 88,000 units in 2012. Shipments of micro servers commenced in 2011 with just 19,000 units. However, shipments by the end of 2016 will rise to some 1.2 million units, as shown in the attached figure.

The penetration of micro servers compared to total server shipments amounted to a negligible 0.2 percent in 2011. But by 2016, the machines will claim a penetration rate of more than 10 percent—a stunning fiftyfold jump.

Micro servers are general-purpose computers, housing single or multiple low-power microprocessors and usually consuming less than 45 watts in a single motherboard. The machines employ shared infrastructure such as power, cooling and cabling with other similar devices, allowing for an extremely dense configuration when micro servers are cascaded together.

“Micro servers provide a solution to the challenge of increasing data-center usage driven by mobile platforms,” said Peter Lin, senior analyst for compute platforms at IHS. “With cloud computing and data centers in high demand in order to serve more smartphones, tablets and mobile PCs online, specific aspects of server design are becoming increasingly important, including maintenance, expandability, energy efficiency and low cost. Such factors are among the advantages delivered by micro servers compared to higher-end machines like mainframes, supercomputers and enterprise servers—all of which emphasize performance and reliability instead.”

Server Salad Days

Micro servers are not the only type of server that will experience rapid expansion in 2013 and the years to come. Other high-growth segments of the server market are cloud servers, blade servers and virtualization servers.

The distinction of fastest-growing server segment, however, belongs solely to micro servers.

The compound annual growth rate for micro servers from 2011 to 2016 stands at a remarkable 130 percent—higher than that of the entire server market by a factor of 26. Shipments will rise by double- and even triple-digit percentages for each year during the period.

Key Players Stand to Benefit

Given the dazzling outlook for micro servers, makers with strong product portfolios of the machines will be well-positioned during the next five years—as will their component suppliers and contract manufacturers.

A slew of hardware providers are in line to reap benefits, including microprocessor vendors like Intel, ARM and AMD; server original equipment manufacturers such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard; and server original development manufacturers including Taiwanese firms Quanta Computer and Wistron.

Among software providers, the list of potential beneficiaries from the micro server boom extends to Microsoft, Red Hat, Citrix and Oracle. For the group of application or service providers that offer micro servers to the public, entities like Amazon, eBay, Google and Yahoo are foremost.

The most aggressive bid for the micro server space comes from Intel and ARM.

Intel first unveiled the micro server concept and reference design in 2009, ostensibly to block rival ARM from entering the field.

ARM, the leader for many years in the mobile world with smartphone and tablet chips because of the low-power design of its central processing units, has been just as eager to enter the server arena—dominated by x86 chip architecture from the likes of Intel and a third chip player, AMD. ARM faces an uphill battle, as the majority of server software is written for x86 architecture. Shifting from x86 to ARM will also be difficult for legacy products.

ARM, however, is gaining greater support from software and OS vendors, which could potentially put pressure on Intel in the coming years.

Read More > Micro Servers: When Small is the Next Big Thing

Then there are a number of Intel competitive posts on Calxeda’s ‘ARM Servers, Now!’ blog:
– What is a “Server-Class” SOC? [Dec 12, 2012]
– Comparing Calxeda ECX1000 to Intel’s new S1200 Centerton chip [Dec 11, 2012]
which you can also find in my Intel targeting ARM based microservers: the Calxeda case [‘Experiencing the Cloud’ blog, Dec 14, 2012] with significantly wider additional information upto binary translation from x86 to ARM with Linux

See also:
– ARM Powered Servers: 2013 is off to a great start & it is only March! [Smart Connected Devices blog of ARM, March 6, 2013]
– Moonshot – a shot in the ARM for the 21st century data center [Smart Connected Devices blog of ARM, April 9, 2013]
– Are you running out of data center space? It may be time for a new server architecture: HP Moonshot [Hyperscale Computing Blog of HP, April 8, 2013]
– HP Moonshot: the HP Labs team that did some of the groundbreaking research [Innovation @ HP Labs blog of HP, April 9, 2013]
– HP Moonshot: An Accelerator for Hyperscale Workloads [Moor Insights White Paper, April 8, 2013]
– Comparing Pattern Mining on a Billion Records with HP Vertica and Hadoop [HP Vertica blog, April 9, 2013] by team of HP Labs researchers show how the Vertica Analytics Platform can be used to find patterns from a billion records in a couple of minutes, about 9x faster than Hadoop.
– ~~PCs and cloud clients are not parts~~ of Hewlett-Packard’s strategy anymore [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Aug 11, 2011 – Jan 17, 2012] see the Autonomy IDOL related content there
– ENCO Systems Selects HP Autonomy for Audio and Video Processing [HP Autonomy press release, April 8, 2013]

HP Autonomy today announced that ENCO Systems, a global provider of radio automation and live television audio solutions, has selected Autonomy’s Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) to upgrade ENCO’s latest-generation enCaption product.

ENCO Systems provides live automated captioning solutions to the broadcast industry, leveraging technology to deliver closed captioning by taking live audio data and turning it into text. ENCO Systems is capitalizing on IDOL’s unique ability to understand meaning, concepts and patterns within massive volumes of spoken and visual content to deliver more accurate speech analytics as part of enCaption3.

“Many television stations count on ENCO to provide real-time closed captioning so that all of their viewers get news and information as it happens, regardless of their auditory limitations,” said Ken Frommert, director, Marketing, ENCO Systems. “Autonomy IDOL helps us provide industry-leading automated closed captioning for a fraction of the cost of traditional services.”

enCaption3 is the only fully automated speech recognition-based closed captioning system for live television that does not require speaker training. It gives broadcasters the ability to caption their programming, including breaking news and weather, any time, day or night, since it is always on and always available. enCaption3 provides captioning in near real time-with only a 3 to 6 second delay-in nearly 30 languages.

“Television networks are under increasing pressure to provide real-time closed captioning services-they face fines if they don’t, and their growing and diverse viewers demand it,” said Rohit de Souza, general manager, Power, HP Autonomy. “This is another example of a technology company integrating Autonomy IDOL to create a stronger, faster and more accurate product offering, and demonstrates yet another powerful way in which IDOL can be applied to help organizations succeed in the human information era.”

– Using Big Data to change the game in the Energy industry [Enterprise Services Blog of HP, Oct 24, 2012]

… Tools like HP’s Autonomy that analyzes the unstructured data found in call recordings, survey responses, chat logs, e-mails, social media posts and more. Autonomy’s Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) technology uses sophisticated pattern-matching techniques and probabilistic modeling to interpret information in much the same way that humans do. …

– Stouffer Egan turns the tables on computers in keynote address at HP Discover [Enterprise Services Blog of HP, June 8, 2012]

For decades now, the human mind has adjusted itself to computers by providing and retrieving structured data in two-dimensional worksheets with constraints on format, data types, list of values, etc. But, this is not the way the human mind has been architected to work. Our minds have the uncanny ability to capture the essence of what is being conveyed in a facial expression in a photograph, the tone of voice or inflection in an audio and the body language in a video. At the HP Discover conference, Autonomy VP for United States, Stouffer Egan showed the audience how software can begin to do what the human mind has being doing since the dawn of time. In a demonstration where Iron Man came live out of a two-dimensional photograph, Egan turned the tables on computers. It is about time computers started thinking like us rather than us forcing us to think like them.

Egan states that the “I” in IT is where the change is happening. We have a newfound wealth of data through various channels including video, social, click stream, audio, etc. However, data unprocessed without any analysis is just that — raw data. For enterprises to realize business value from this unstructured data, we need tools that can process it across multiple media. Imagine software that recognizes the picture in a photograph and searches for a video matching the person in the picture. The cover page of a newspaper showing a basketball star doing a slam dunk suddenly turns live pulling up the video of this superstar’s winning shot in last night’s game. …

2. Software Partners

HP Moonshot is setting the roadmap for next generation data centers by changing the model for density, power, cost and innovation. Ubuntu has been designed to meet the needs of Hyperscale customers and, combined with its management tools, is ideally suited be the operating system platform for HP Moonshot. Canonical has been working with HP since the beginning of the Moonshot Project, and Ubuntu is the only OS integrated and fully operational across the complete Moonshot System covering x86 and ARM chip technologies. What Canonical is saying about HP Moonshot	As mobile workstyles become the norm, the scalability needs of today’s applications and devices are increasingly challenging what traditional infrastructures can support. With HP’s Moonshot System, customers will be able to rapidly deploy, scale, and manage any workload with dramatically lower space and energy constraints. The HP Pathfinder Innovation Ecosystem is a prime opportunity for Citrix to help accelerate the development of innovative solutions that will benefit our enterprise cloud, virtualization and mobility customers.
We’re committed to helping enterprises achieve the most from their Big Data initiatives. Our partnership with HP enables joint customers to keep and query their data at scale so they can ask bigger questions and get bigger answers. By using HP’s Moonshot System, our customers can benefit from the improved resource utilization of next generation data center solutions that are workload optimized for specific applications.
Today’s interactive applications are accessed 24×365 by millions of web and mobile users, and the volume and velocity of data they generate is growing at an unprecedented rate. Traditional technologies are hard pressed to keep up with the scalability and performance demands of these new applications. Couchbase NoSQL database technology combined with HP’s Moonshot System is a powerful offering for customers who want to easily develop interactive web and mobile applications and run them reliably at scale.	Our partnership with HP facilitates CyWee’s goal of offering solutions that merge the digital and physical worlds. With TI’s new SoCs, we are one step closer to making this a reality by pushing state-of-the-art video to specialized server environments. Together, CyWee and HP will deliver richer multimedia experiences in a variety of cloud-based markets, including cloud gaming, virtual office, video conferencing and remote education.
HP’s new Moonshot System will enable organizations to increase the energy efficiency of their data centers while reducing costs. Our Cassandra-based database platform provides the massive scalability and multi-datacenter capabilities that are a perfect complement to this initiative, and we are excited to be working with HP to bring this solution to a wide range of customers.	Big data comes in a wide range for formats and types and is a result of the connected everything world we live in. Through Project Moonshot, HP has enabled a new class of infrastructure to run more efficient workloads, like Apache Hadoop, and meet the market demand of more performance for less.
The unprecedented volume and variety of data introduces unique challenges to organizations today… By combining the HP Moonshot system with Autonomy IDOL’s unique ability to understand concepts in information, organizations can dramatically reduce the cost, space, and energy requirements for their big data initiatives, and at the same time gain insights that grow revenue, reduce risk, and increase their overall Return on Information.	Big Data is not just for Big Companies – or Big Servers – anymore – it’s affecting all sectors of the market. At HP Vertica we’re very excited about the work we’ve been doing with the Moonshot team on innovative configurations and types of analytic appliances which will allow us to bring the benefits of real-time Big Data analytics to new segments of the market. The combination of the HP Vertica Analytics Platform and Moonshot is going to be a game-changer for many.
HP worked closely with Linaro to establish the Linaro Enterprise Group (LEG). This will help accelerate the development of the software ecosystem around ARM Powered servers. HP’s Moonshot System is a great platform for innovation – encouraging a wide range of silicon vendors to offer competing ‘plug-and-play’ server solutions, which will give end users maximum choice for all their different workloads. What Linaro is saying about HP Moonshot[HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, April 8, 2013]	Organizations are looking for ways to rapidly deploy, scale, and manage their infrastructure, with an architecture that is optimized for today’s application workloads. HP Moonshot System is an energy efficient, space saving, workload-optimized solution to meet these needs, and HP has partnered with MapR Technologies, a Hadoop technology leader, to accelerate innovation and deployment of Big Data solutions.
NuoDB and HP are shattering the scalability and density barriers of a traditional database server. NuoDB on the HP Moonshot System delivers unparalleled database density, where customers can now run their applications across thousands of databases on a single box, significantly reducing the total cost across hardware, software, and power consumption. The flexible architecture of HP Moonshot coupled with NuoDB’s hyper-pluggable database design and its innovative “database hibernation” technology makes it possible to bring this unprecedented hardware and software combination to market. What NuoDB is saying about HP Moonshot [HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, April 9, 2013]	As the leading solution provider for the hosting market, Parallels is excited to be collaborating in the HP Pathfinder Innovation Ecosystem. The HP Moonshot System in concert with Parallels Plesk Panel and Parallels Containers provides a flexible and efficient solution for cloud computing and hosting.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux on HP’s converged infrastructure means predictability, consistency and stability. Companies around the globe rely on these attributes when deploying applications every day, and our value proposition is just as important in the Hyperscale segment. When customers require a standard operating environment based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, I believe they will look to the HP Moonshot System as a strong platform for high-density Hyperscale implementations. What Red Hat is saying about HP Moonshot [HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, April 8, 2013]	HP Project Moonshot’s promise of extreme low-energy servers is a game changer, and SUSE is pleased to partner with HP to bring this new innovation to market. For more than twenty years, SUSE has adapted its enterprise-grade Linux operating system to achieve ever-increasing performance needs that succeed both today and tomorrow in areas such as Big Data and cloud computing. What SUSE is saying about HP Moonshot [HewlettPackardVideos YouTube channel, April 8, 2013]

3. Hardware Partners

AMD is excited to continue our deep collaboration with HP to bring extreme low-energy, ultra dense, specialized server solutions to the market. Both companies share a passion to bring innovative workload optimized solutions to the market, enabling customers to scale-out to new levels within existing energy and space constraints. The new low-power x86 AMD Opteron™ APU is optimized in the HP Moonshot System to dramatically lower TCO in quickly emerging media oriented workloads. What AMD is saying about HP Moonshot	It is exciting to see HP take the lead in innovating low-energy servers for the cloud. Applied Micro’s ARM 64-bit X-Gene Server on a Chip will enable performance levels seen in today’s deployments while offering higher densities, greatly improved I/O, and substantial reductions in the total cost of ownership. Together, we will unleash innovation unlike anything we’ve seen in the server market for decades. What Applied Micro is saying about HP Moonshot
In the current economic and power realities, today’s server infrastructure cannot meet the needs of the next billion data users, or the evolving needs of currently supported users. Customers need innovative SoC solutions which deliver more integration and optimization than has historically been required by traditional enterprise workloads. HP’s Moonshot System is a departure from the one size fits all approach of traditional enterprise and embraces a range of ARM partner solutions that address different performance, workloads and cost points. What ARM is saying HP Moonshot	Calxeda and HP’s new Moonshot System are a powerful combination, and sets a new standard for ultra-efficient web and application serving. Fulfilling a journey started together in November 2011, Project Moonshot creates the foundation for the new age of application-specific computing. What Calxeda is saying about HP Moonshot
HP Moonshot System is a game changer for delivering optimized server solutions. It beautifully balances the need for mixing different processor solutions optimized for different workloads under a standard hardware and software framework. Cavium’s Project Thunder will provide a family of 64-bit ARM v8 processors with dense and scalable sever class performance at extremely attractive power and cost metrics. We are doing this by blending performance and power efficient compute, high performance memory and networking into a single, highly integrated SoC. What Cavium is saying about HP Moonshot	Intel is proud to deliver the only server class, 64-bit SoC technology that powers the first and only production shipping HP ProLiant Moonshot Server today. 64-bit Intel Atom processor S1200 family features extreme low power combined with required datacenter class capabilities for lightweight web scale workloads, such as low end dedicated hosting and static web serving. In collaboration with HP, we have a strong roadmap of additional server solutions shipping later this year, including Intel’s 2nd generation 64-bit SoC, “Avoton” based on leading 22nm manufacturing technology, that will deliver best in class energy efficiency and density for HP Moonshot System. What Intel is saying about HP Moonshot
	What Marvell is saying about HP Moonshot
HP Moonshot System’s high density packaging coupled with integrated network capability provides the perfect platform to enable HP Pathfinder Innovation Ecosystem partners to deliver cutting edge technology to the hyper-scale market. SRC Computers is excited to bring its history of delivering paradigm shifting high-performance, low-power, reconfigurable processors to HP Project Moonshot’s vision of optimizing hardware for maximum application performance at lowest TCO. What SRC Computers is saying about HP Moonshot	The scalability and high performance at low power offered through HP’s Moonshot System gives customers an unmatched ability to adapt their solutions to the ever-changing and demanding market needs in the high performance computing, cloud computing and communications infrastructure markets. The strong collaboration efforts between HP and TI through the HP Pathfinder Innovation Ecosystem ensure that customers understand and get the most benefit from the processors at a system-level. What TI is saying about HP Moonshot

TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process to be further optimised with Imagination’s PowerVR Series6 GPUs and Cadence design infrastructure

April 8, 2013 4:49 pm / 1 Comment on TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process to be further optimised with Imagination’s PowerVR Series6 GPUs and Cadence design infrastructure

OR After CPU level optimisation With 28nm non-exclusive in 2013 TSMC tested first tape-out of an ARM Cortex™-A57 processor on 16nm FinFET process technology [‘Experiencing the Cloud’ April 3, 2013] the world #1 foundry decided to further optimise its crucial 16nm FinFET process with the most demanding from implementation point of view PowerVR Series6 GPUs for graphics and compute applications

Update: TSMC 16nm FinFET to enter mass production within one year after 20nm ramp-up, says Chang [DIGITIMES, April 18, 2013]

TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process will enter mass production in less than one year after ramping up production of 20nm chips, company chairman and CEO Morris Chang said at an investors meeting today (April 18).

Chang indicated that TSMC already moved its 20nm process to risk production in the first quarter of 2013. As for 16nm FinFET, the node will be ready for risk production by the year-end, Chang said.

While stepping up efforts to bring newer nodes online, TSMC has revised upward its 2013 capex to US$9.5-10 billion. The foundry previously set capex for the year at US$9 billion.

In addition, Chang reiterated his previous remark that production of TSMC’s 28nm wafers and revenues generated from the process in 2013 will triple those of 2012. The node technology will continue to play the major driver of TSMC’s revenue growth in 2013, said Chang, adding that the foundry’s share of the 28nm foundry market will remain high this year.

The essence:

Cadence and TSMC Strengthen Collaboration on Design Infrastructure for 16nm FinFET Process Technology [press release, April 8, 2013]
Imagination and TSMC Strengthen Technology Collaboration [press release, March 25, 2013] TSMC optimising 16nm FinFET design flows using PowerVR GPUs to drive mobile performance

… As part of this new phase of their relationship, Imagination will work closely with TSMC to develop highly optimised reference design flows and silicon implementations using Imagination’s industry-leading PowerVR Series6 GPUs combined with TSMC’s advanced process technologies, including 16-nanometer (nm) FinFET process technology.

Imagination and TSMC R&D teams will also work together to create fully characterised reference system designs, utilizing high bandwidth memory standards and TSMC’s 3D IC technology capability to demonstrate new levels of system performance and capabilities while retaining all the essential characteristics of power, silicon area and small package footprint demanded by high volume mobile SoCs. …

… “Just as memory drove silicon processes in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and CPUs drove processes further in the late ‘90s and ‘00s, high performance mobile GPUs for graphics and compute applications are one of the major drivers for our most advanced process technologies,” says Dr. Cliff Hou, TSMC Vice President, R&D. “We’re pleased to be working with Imagination, an established leader in mobile and embedded GPU IP, to understand how best to use PowerVR GPUs to work with us to optimize future generations of our most advanced process technologies, and advanced system design techniques.” …

This close cooperation will significantly help TSMC to reach mass production at 16nm node in H2 2014 at the latest, as shown by the advanced technology ramp-up information at TSMC given below:

Back in November it was reported that TSMC 16nm FinFET rollout to come earlier than expected, says Digitimes Research analyst [Nov 8, 2012]:

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is expected to ramp up 20nm production ahead of schedule, and also put its 16nm FinFET process into production far earlier than expected, according to Digitimes Research analyst Nobunaga Chai.

Chai indicated that information revealed by TSMC at its most-recent investors meeting clearly shows that the foundry has made significant progress in the development of advanced process technology, especially its first FinFET process that will be at 16nm. TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process should be able to enter mass production in less than one year after ramping up production of 20nm chips, Chai predicts.

Speculation has been circulating that TSMC’s 20nm process will help the foundry attract its first orders for application chips from Apple. Chai said that he expects TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process to play an important role in Apple’s “breakthrough” product. TSMC’s 20nm process is likely to grab orders for Apple’s next processor, which could be merely an upgrade of the existing A6 version.

During a Q&A session at TSMC’s recent investors meeting, company CFO Lora Ho revealed that the foundry’s 20nm process has received around 50 product tape-outs – about one-fifth of TSMC’s previous tape-outs using 28nm process. Ho added that actual production at the newer node will not kick off until 2014.

As for 16nm FinFET, TSMC chairman and CEO Morris Chang disclosed that the company expects to start “risk” production of the process in November 2013, followed by mass production a year later.

and a few days ago came the news that TSMC to install 20nm fab equipment ahead of schedule, says report [DIGITIMES, April 2, 2013]

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) plans to begin installing production equipment at its 20nm-capable facilities on April 20, about two months ahead of schedule, according to a Chinese-language Economic Dailys News (EDN) report.

Following the equipment move-in, TSMC is expected to tape out SoC products at 20nm around the end of the second quarter with initial capacity of 5,000 12-inch wafer starts per month, the report cited unnamed fab tool suppliers as indicating. The new technology node is set to enter volume production in the third quarter with monthly capacity reaching more than 10,000 wafer starts, the report said.

TSMC internally set a target of growing its capacity for 20nm products to 30,000-40,000 wafer starts monthly by the end of the first quarter, 2014, the report noted.

TSMC in April 2012 disclosed that its 20nm technology would begin volume production at Phase 6 of its Fab 12 wafer fab (Hsinchu, northern Taiwan) in 2013, and Phase 5 of Fab 14 (Tainan, southern Taiwan) will be the foundry’s second 20nm-capable fab, which is scheduled to enter volume production in early 2014.

TSMC also began construction on Phase 3 of Fab 15 (Taichung, central Taiwan) in September 2011. The module will be TSMC’s second gigafab equipped for 20nm process technology. The foundry has not provided a timeframe to volume produce 20nm products at Phase 3 of Fab 15, but already set the initial capacity at 40,000 wafer starts per month.

The evolution which led to the crucial TSMC-Imagination-Cadence collaboration at the 16nm node was:

TSMC OIP 2012 – David Harold (Director of PR, Imagination Technologies) interview [chipestimate YouTube channel, Oct 26, 2012]

Sean O’Kane, Producer/Host ChipEstimate.TV interviews at TSMC OIP (Open Innovation Platform) 2012 John Blyler, Editor-in-Chief, Chip Design and Embedded Intel magazines David Harold, Director of PR, Imagination Technologies. See Latest Imagination Technologies IP at http://www.chipestimate.com/prime-partner/211/Imagination-Technologies-IP-Catalog

Implementing and Optimising Graphics IP in SoCs [Imagination Technologies presentation at TSMC OIP 2012, Oct 16, 2012] by Steven Riddle

Abstract

As major IP blocks such as GPUs increasingly dominate the area, power and performance of next generation SoCs, traditional “Soft IP” fully synthesisable, process-neutral solutions need to be re-evaluated to maintain the optimum balance between maximum portability and maximum performance. In this paper, we will discuss the techniques being used by Imagination and its partners to address some of the highest performance corners of this envelope, and how the characteristics of the latest processes such as 28HPM and beyond are being taken increasingly into account when designing future Soft IP high performance solutions.

Imagination highlights how GPUs are driving silicon performance and SoC innovation [press release, Oct 16, 2012]

Imagination’s engineers to present paper on GPU Optimisation Techniques at TSMC’s Open Innovation Platform Forum

San Jose: Imagination Technologies, a leading multimedia and communications technologies company, observes that the growth in performance of mobile GPUs, such as its PowerVR IP cores, is driving future generations of silicon process and packaging technologies, as well as SoC (system on chip) processing performance across a growing range of markets.

The GPU’s ability to deliver unprecedented processing horsepower (measured in GFLOPS) whilst also delivering amazing graphics performance per mm2 and per mW, means that GPU capabilities are becoming the dominant force driving heterogeneous processing performance in everything from mobile phones through to TVs, in-car information and entertainment, games consoles and even cloud computing.

Recognising this trend, Imagination is further developing its roadmaps, architectures and support to ensure its partners can select IP solutions optimized for the latest silicon process and SIP (System in Package) technologies, enabling them to realise the full potential of what GPUs can deliver in SoCs, both for graphics and compute capabilities.

To help its partners, Imagination is already working with leading silicon foundries to implement high performance mobile GPU-based systems delivering unheard-of levels of memory bandwidth, using the latest PowerVR Series6 GPUs combined with wide I/O memory and advanced 3DIC assembly and process technologies. Imagination is also working with foundries and EDA vendors to ensure that licensees of all of Imagination’s IP (intellectual property) cores can benefit from well-defined tool flows and optimized libraries to achieve the most aggressive speed, area and power consumption targets.

Reflecting closer ties to key foundries, Imaginations’ engineers will be speaking at the TSMC Open Innovation Platform Forum 2012 in San Jose, CA, on ‘Implementing and Optimising Graphics IP in SoCs’. Imagination will also be demonstrating its latest PowerVR GPU and VPU (video processor) as well as Ensigma RPU (radio processor) and Meta CPU IP technologies at the event (booth 201).

Says Tony King-Smith, VP marketing, Imagination: “Just as memory drove silicon processes in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and CPUs drove these in the late ‘90s and ‘00s, mobile GPUs are now becoming the most demanding on-chip function driving tomorrow’s advanced SoCs and silicon processes. We see our strengthening relationships with leading foundries, EDA vendors and library providers, as well as strategic activities with industry standards bodies such as HSA Foundation and Khronos Group, as key to ensuring we continue to drive and deliver the leading edge capabilities our customers have come to expect from us.”

More information:
– Imagination Technologies will boost mobile graphics performance through customization [VentureBeat, Oct 15, 2012]

… Imagination usually gives a “synthesizable core,” or a ready-to-go finished design, to its chip licensee partners. The partners take that core and incorporate it in their chips and take it to a foundry partner, which makes the chip. The change now will be that Imagination will optimize its cores for a particular foundry’s factory, such as a 28-nanometer manufacturing line at TSMC, so that the resulting chip will be faster and use less power.

“We’re doing this because our customers are asking for it,” said Tony King-Smith (pictured), vice president of marketing at London-based Imagination Technologies, at a press briefing in San Jose, Calif. “They say they want a chip tuned to a particular foundry.”

King-Smith said the result would be faster and lower power chips, but he couldn’t quantify how much. …

– Imagination tools graphics cores for 28 nm [EETimes, Oct 15, 2012]

…

Imagination is working with EDA tool and library developers as well as foundries to help optimize the physical layout of its GPUs. However, the company currently has no plans to sell hardened macros.

New capabilities will span a broad range of chip design areas including standard cell libraries, voltage scaling in process nodes and clock-tree optimization, Tony King-Smith, vice president of marketing at Imagination, said here the day before the opening of the TSMC event. “People are asking us to do more process tuning,” said King-Smith. “We will not deviate from our IP being fully synthesizable, however we will complement it more and more with tuned libraries and tool flows.”

“We are making the design more aware of the process with hints in the design database itself—most library vendors with an open mind will be talking with us,” King-Smith added.

Hard macros are rarely used because “no one has the same [chip] floor plan, so it’s better to tune up the flows and libraries so people can harden the designs themselves more effectively,” he added.

The extent of improvements in reduced power consumption, area or increased performance will vary greatly among design teams, depending on the time they put into the optimizations, he said, declining to provide any hard figures.

Foundries as well as SoC designers are driving the demand for more optimization, he said. Most of the effort is now going on at the 28-nm node, but programs have started at 20- and 14/16-nm nodes using FinFETs, he added.

“The foundries are coming to us when characterizing 28- or 20-nm nodes looking for reference designs for what will push their processes,” said King-Smith. “Historically, it has been memory and processors [in that role but] now GPUs are consuming the most area and power on the chip,” he said.

…

Imagination Optimizes its IP Capabilities with TSMC on Latest Silicon Process Technologies [press release, June 14, 2012]

Imagination Technologies, a leading multimedia and communications technologies company, announced its collaboration with TSMC to ensure that licensees of all of Imagination’s IP (intellectual property) cores can optimize speed, area and power consumption on TSMC’s most advanced 28nm and below processes.

By bringing together engineers from both companies, this collaboration aims to improve power, performance, and area by co-optimising TSMC process technologies and foundation IPs with Imagination’s most advanced IP cores, including its latest PowerVR GPUs.

Imagination, a member of TSMC’s Soft-IP Alliance program, is making this announcement as part of a closer relationship with TSMC. Imagination intends to validate its IP cores through the TSMC Soft-IP Alliance program.

Imagination’s IP core families in this collaboration include:

PowerVR graphics, the de facto standard for mobile, embedded and computing graphics

PowerVR video and display, the comprehensive and widely adopted range of multistandard decoder, encoder and enhancement cores for applications from mobile to ultra-HD

Ensigma communications, the multi-standard programmable communications and connectivity technology for TV, radio, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

Meta processors, the advanced 32-bit hardware multi-threaded processor architecture that delivers the best in both general purpose and signal processing performance

Imagination is one of the world’s leading semiconductor IP suppliers, with cores which can be synthesised for a broad range of silicon processes. As more customers use Imagination’s IP cores to deliver the key high performance processing on their SoCs (System on Chip), Imagination plays a key role in the semiconductor IP segment to deliver the levels of performance demanded by leading edge customers.

Says Tony King-Smith, VP marketing, Imagination: “Many of our licensees rely on TSMC to provide them with leading edge low power, high performance silicon foundry capabilities. This strengthening of our relationship with TSMC reflects our determination to deliver the best possible SoC solutions on the latest silicon processes for our SoC IP licensing partners. We believe this initiative will ensure that Imagination’s licensees to continue to push the boundaries of what is possible for future generations of advanced SoCs.”

Says Mark Dunn, VP of IMGWorks, Imagination’s SoC implementation group: “The characteristics of the latest processes such as 28HPM and beyond have to be taken increasingly into account when designing future high performance IP-based solutions. As major blocks such as GPUs increasingly dominate the area, power and performance of next generation SoCs, design flows need to be tuned to maintain the optimum balance between maximizing IP portability and achieving the best possible performance. We believe this extensive engineering partnership will greatly benefit all of our IP partners.”

“We are delighted to be working with Imagination to deliver the full benefits of TSMC’s latest and most advanced processes for mobile and embedded applications,” says Suk Lee, Senior Director of Design Infrastructure Marketing Division, TSMC. “By leveraging Imagination’s leadership position in the market, we can help our customers to ship the most highly optimised SoCs.”

Imagination and TSMC Strengthen Technology Collaboration [press release, March 25, 2013]

TSMC optimising 16nm FinFET design flows using PowerVR GPUs to drive mobile performance

Kings Langley and Hsinchu – March 25, 2013 – TSMC (TWSE: 2330, NYSE: TSM) and Imagination Technologies (LSE: IMG.L), a leading multimedia, processor, communications and cloud technologies company, today announced the next phase of their technology collaboration.

As part of this new phase of their relationship, Imagination will work closely with TSMC to develop highly optimised reference design flows and silicon implementations using Imagination’s industry-leading PowerVR Series6 GPUs combined with TSMC’s advanced process technologies, including 16-nanometer (nm) FinFET process technology.

Imagination and TSMC R&D teams will also work together to create fully characterised reference system designs, utilizing high bandwidth memory standards and TSMC’s 3D IC technology capability to demonstrate new levels of system performance and capabilities while retaining all the essential characteristics of power, silicon area and small package footprint demanded by high volume mobile SoCs.

As GPUs increasingly dominate the area, power and performance of next generation SoCs and the options available to designers using advanced silicon processes become more complex, design flows and libraries need to be optimally tuned to enable design teams to achieve the best possible performance, power consumption and silicon area in ever more demanding timescales. To address these challenges, Imagination and TSMC are investigating how the characteristics of the latest processes, such as 16FinFET, influence the design of high performance IP-based SoCs.

Says Hossein Yassaie, CEO of Imagination: “Many of our licensees rely on TSMC to provide them with leading edge low power, high performance silicon foundry capabilities. Through advanced projects initiated under this partnership, Imagination and TSMC are working together to showcase how SoCs will transform the future of mobile and embedded products. We are delighted to announce our strengthening relationship with TSMC, and look forward to seeing the fruits of these projects benefiting our many mutual customers.”

“Just as memory drove silicon processes in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and CPUs drove processes further in the late ‘90s and ‘00s, high performance mobile GPUs for graphics and compute applications are one of the major drivers for our most advanced process technologies,” says Dr. Cliff Hou, TSMC Vice President, R&D. “We’re pleased to be working with Imagination, an established leader in mobile and embedded GPU IP, to understand how best to use PowerVR GPUs to work with us to optimize future generations of our most advanced process technologies, and advanced system design techniques.”

Imagination IP cores for next generation SoCs

Imagination is a member of TSMC’s Soft-IP Alliance program, through which it has begun to validate all of its major IP core families so that TSMC’s customers can take full advantage of the results of this collaboration. Imagination’s IP portfolio is unrivalled in its breadth, including:

• PowerVR GPU (graphics processor) Series5, 5XT and 6 (‘Rogue’): the most widely shipped for mobile and embedded graphics and GPU Compute

• PowerVR VPU (video processor) Series3 and 4: the industry’s most widely deployed range of multi-standard video decoder and encoder cores for applications from mobile to ultra-HD

• Ensigma RPU (radio processor) Series3 and 4: the multi-standard programmable communications and connectivity technology for TV, radio, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

• MIPS CPU and embedded processors: advanced processor architectures featuring hardware multi-threading that deliver class-leading performance from high end Android-based applications processors down to small yet highly efficient embedded processors

Cadence and TSMC Strengthen Collaboration on Design Infrastructure for 16nm FinFET Process Technology [press release, April 8, 2013]

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDNS), today announced an ongoing multi-year agreement with TSMC to develop the design infrastructure for 16-nanometer FinFET technology, targeting advanced node designs for mobile, networking, servers and FPGA applications. The deep collaboration, beginning earlier in the design process than usual, will effectively address the design challenges specific to FinFETs – from design analysis through signoff – and will deliver the infrastructure necessary to enable ultra low-power, high-performance chips.

FinFETs help deliver the power, performance, and area (PPA) advantages that are needed to develop highly differentiated SoC designs at 16 nanometers and smaller process technologies. Unlike a planar FET, the FinFET employs a vertical fin-like structure protruding from the substrate with the gate wrapping around the sides and top of the fin, thereby producing transistors with low leakage currents and fast switching performance. This extended Cadence-TSMC collaboration will produce the design infrastructure that chip designers need for accurate electrical characteristics and parasitic models required for advanced FinFET designs for mobile and enterprise applications.

“The FinFET device requires greater accuracy, from analysis through signoff, and that is why TSMC is teaming with Cadence on this project,” said Suk Lee, TSMC Senior Director, Design Infrastructure Marketing Division. “This collaboration will enable designers to use the new process technology with confidence earlier than ever before, allowing our mutual customers to meet their power, performance and time-to-market goals.”

“Producing the design infrastructure necessary for these types of complex, groundbreaking processes requires close collaboration between foundries and EDA technology innovators,” said Chi-Ping Hsu, senior vice president, Silicon Realization Group at Cadence. “In joining with TSMC, a leader in FinFET technology, Cadence brings unique technology innovations and expertise that will provide designers with the FinFET design capabilities they need to bring high-performance, power-efficient products to market.”

About Cadence

Cadence enables global electronic design innovation and plays an essential role in the creation of today’s integrated circuits and electronics. Customers use Cadence software, hardware, IP, and services to design and verify advanced semiconductors, consumer electronics, networking and telecommunications equipment, and computer systems. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the world to serve the global electronics industry. More information about the company, its products, and services is available at www.cadence.com.

The state of big.LITTLE processing

April 7, 2013 6:22 pm / 4 Comments on The state of big.LITTLE processing

Complementary post reminder: Eight-core MT6592 for superphones and big.LITTLE MT8135 for tablets implemented in 28nm HKMG are coming from MediaTek to further disrupt the operations of Qualcomm and Samsung [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, July 20, 2013] from which the following excerpts I will include here as the ones directly related to the content given here as well:

There are also two software models now available, that ARM and Linaro have developed to enable control of workloads, performance, and power management on big.LITTLE SoCs. … The second is the Global Task Scheduling (GTS) [also known as big.LITTLE MP] software developed (and now named) by ARM.

…

Until GTS functionality is fully upstream, ARM is supporting the big.LITTLE MP patch set for its licensees, leveraging Linaro’s public monthly and Linaro LSK builds, so that it is available to all ARM licensees for product integration and deployment. Linaro also expect to provide a topic branch for the latest work available on the upstream GTS implementation for interested developers.

… ARM and Linaro now recommend product development and deployment to be based on the GTS solution. However, there are some cases where hardware limitations or a requirement for the traditional Linux scheduler (for example in some embedded applications) may lead to IKS still being required.

…

Real Life Results

ARM has published further information on big.LITTLE configurations and performance in a blog entry here [Ten Things to Know About big.LITTLE [Brian Jeff on SoC Design blog of ARM, June 18, 2013]].

The first commercial products based on big.LITTLE are certain international versions of the latest Galaxy S4 phone from Linaro member, Samsung. Samsung-LSI provide an ‘Octa-core’ 4+4 big.LITTLE chip for this phone. As has been publicly noted, the current generation of hardware cannot yet take full advantage of the IKS or the GTS designs because the hardware power-saving core switching feature is implemented on a cluster basis rather than on a per-core or a per-pair basis. …

End of the complementary post reminder

The first big.LITTLE device (Samsung Galaxy S4, Exynos 5 Octa version) was announced mid-March and hopefully will be available from end of April at the earliest, and in a few countries only (US is one of them). The price is also way too high: $1,379 unlocked on Amazon. 70% of the first 10M S4 smartphones will come with the quad-core Snapdragon S600 instead (seemingly for as low price as $800). The reason is: Samsung Semiconductor is just entering 28nm production with this SoC so it is “scheduled for mass-production in the second quarter of 2013”. While we should therefore wait probably till Q3 for larger scale availability it is already time to examine both the product and the form of big.LITTLE processing delivered with it:

Introducing Samsung GALAXY S 4 [Samsung Mobile Press, March 14, 2013]

Developed to redefine the way we live, the GALAXY S 4 makes every moment of our life meaningful. It understands the value of relationships, enables true connections with friends and family, and believes in the importance of effortless experience.

Highly crafted design with a larger screen and battery, thin bezel, housed in a light 130g and slim 7.9mm chassis. The new Samsung GALAXY S 4 is slimmer, yet stronger.

The GALAXY S 4 gets you closer to what matters in life, and brings your world together.

For a richer, simpler and fuller life.

To find out more, click here http://www.samsung.com/galaxys4/

Samsung Introduces the GALAXY S 4 – A Life Companion for a richer, simpler and fuller life [Samsung press release, March 14, 2013] in US: Pre Order with Octa-Core … Will Ship on Date 30 April By Fedex

… Samsung GALAXY S 4 will be available from Q2 globally [in UK: from April 26th but the Qualcomm Quad-Core; in US: Pre Order with Octa-Core … Will Ship on Date 30 April By Fedex] including US, partnering with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, as well as US Cellular and Cricket. In Europe, Samsung GALAXY S 4 is partnering with global mobile operators such as Deutsche Telecom, EE, H3G, Orange, Telenor, Telia Sonera, Telefonica, and Vodafone. …

AP

1.9 GHz [Qualcomm] Quad-Core Processor / 1.6 GHz [Samsung] Octa-Core Processor
The selection of AP will be differed by markets.

70% of first Galaxy S4s to come with Snapdragon 600 CPU. Samsung LSI couldn’t make enough Exynos 5 Octas in time [Unwired.com, March 25, 2013]

70% of the first 10 million Samsung Galaxy S4 production batch will come with Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 CPU, instead of its own Exynos 5 Octa, Korean ETNEws reports.

Samsung’s LSI division, responsible for the next generation Exynos CPU, failed to iron out the production and performance issues to have enough chips in time for Galaxy S4 launch. Couple of weeks ago Samsung announced that Exynos 5 Octa applications processor is scheduled for mass production only in Q2 2013. Which is too late for the huge volumes of Galaxy S4 shipments that will start in late April.

Last year Samsung already faced production problems with Galaxy S3 and lost a lot of sales in early summer because of it. This year, Sammy doubled the initial sales forecasts for the new flagship and wants to sell 40 million of them in the first three months. So instead of risking the chip supply shortages, they are now turning to Qualcomm for Snapdragon 600 CPU, which was initially slated to go mostly to U.S. versions of SGS4.

Taking a step back to fix the production and performances issues of one of the most important parts in your flagship device, is a smart thing to do. If you launch your new top of the line phone with serious quality issues, the initial bad press can be fatal to your plans to sell 100 million them over the product lifecycle.

Going with tried and true chip like Snapdragon 600, that you know will perform as it should, is the best way for Samsung for now. Especially since most of the users won’t notice the difference and won’t care anyway.

Samsung Announces the Availability of Exynos 5 Octa for New Generation of Mobile Devices [press release, March 15, 2013] (internal name: Exynos 5410)

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a world leader in advanced semiconductor solutions, announced that its new Exynos 5 Octa application processor is scheduled for mass-production in the second quarter of 2013.

…

As highlighted at CES 2013, the Exynos 5 Octa is the world’s first mobile application processor to implement the new concept of processing architecture, big.LITTLE™, based on the Cortex-A15™ CPU to offer optimal core use. By housing a total of eight cores to draw from—four powerful Cortex-A15™cores for processing-intense tasks along with Cortex-A7™ quad cores for lighter workloads—the Exynos 5 Octa enables mobile devices to achieve maximum performance. This approach offers up to 70 percent energy saving when performing various tasks, compared to using Cortex- A15™cores only.

The newest Exynos processor will be manufactured using Samsung’s latest 28-nanometer (nm) HKMG (High-k Metal Gate) low power process and power-saving design, which increases the power efficiency of the processor by minimizing the static current leakage.

The Samsung Exynos 5 Octa enhances the powerful 3D graphics processing capabilities by more than two-times over the Exynos 4 Quad.

With today’s advanced display technology transitioning toward ever higher and sharper resolutions, the Exynos 5 Octa is powerful enough to drive WQXGA (2560×1600) display, the best crystal-clear resolution currently available for mobile devices, enabling users to enjoy crisper video images on their premium smartphones and tablets.

By adopting e-MMC (embedded multimedia card) 5.0 and USB 3.0 interface for the first time in the industry, the new Exynos application processor boasts fast data transfer speed, a feature that is increasingly required to support advanced processing power on mobile devices so that users can fully experience upgraded mobile computing such as faster booting, web browsing and 3D game loading.

The Samsung Exynos 5 Octa incorporates a full HD 60fps (frame per second) video hardware codec engine for 1080p video recording and play-back, an embedded 13 mega-pixel 30fps image signal processor interface for high-quality camera functionality, and 12.8GB/s memory bandwidth interface that enables Full HD Wifi display.

…

Samsung Exynos at MWC 2013: Exynos 5 Octa Explained [SamsungExynos YouTube channel, March 14, 2013]

This animated display for the Exynos 5 Octa mobile processor was featured in the Samsung Exynos booth at Mobile World Congress 2013. Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa is the industry’s first ARM® big.LITTLE™-enabled mobile application processor (AP). The Exynos 5 Octa pairs ultra-efficient ARM® Cortex™-A7 (LITTLE) cores with Cortex™-A15 (big) cores designed for the highest performance. This new system-on-chip (SoC) uses LITTLE cores to handle tasks like emailing, light web search and map navigation and uses the big cores for heavy-duty applications like graphic-intensive gaming. Find out more about how Samsung Exynos is driving the discovery of what’s possible: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/Exynos/index.html

ARM® Big.LITTLE™ Technology Demo on Exynos 5 Octa Reference Tablet at MWC 2013 [SamsungExynos YouTube channel, March 19, 2013]

ARM’s Eric Gowland demoed ARM® big.LITTLE™ processing technology on an Exynos 5 Octa reference tablet in the ARM booth at Mobile World Congress 2013. Gowland showed us the big.LITTLE-enabled Exynos 5 Octa reference platform running a series of benchmarks for tablet activities like web browsing, video playback, graphics rendering and map navigation. In addition to displaying the CPU migration as the processor switched between activities, the demo showed the relative energy usage throughout, highlighting the extreme power efficiency of big.LITTLE architecture. To learn more about ARM® big.LITTLE™ technology, visit our MWC 2013 webpage: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/Exynos/index.html You can also find more information on ARM’s specialized microsite:http://thinkbiglittle.com/

Samsung Exynos at MWC 2013: Low-Power High K Metal Gate (HKMG) Process Technology [SamsungExynos YouTube channel, March 14, 2013]

Samsung’s Low-Power High K Metal Gate (HKMG) advanced process technology was featured in this animated display inside the Exynos booth at Mobile World Congress 2013. It demonstrates the progression in process technology from 90nm to 28nm, which has resulted in greater speeds and energy-efficiency in Exynos mobile application processors (APs) developed with the technology. For example, the Exynos 5 Octa can offer up to 70% in energy savings thanks to Samsung’s HKMG process. To learn more about Samsung’s HKMG advanced process technology, visit our website: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/Exynos/index.html

big.LITTLE Processing [ARM technology site, March 20, 2013] [Linaro internal: IKS [In Kernel Switcher]

ARM big.LITTLE™ processing is an energy saving technology where the highest performance ARM CPUs are combined with the most efficient ARM CPUs in a combined processor subsystem to deliver greater performance at lower power than today’s best-in-class systems. With big.LITTLE processing, software workloads are dynamically and instantly transitioned to the appropriate CPU based on performance needs. This software load balancing is so fast that it is completely seamless to the user. By selecting the optimum processor for each task, big.LITTLE can reduce energy consumption in the processor by 70% or more on light workloads and background tasks, and by 50% for moderately intense work, while still delivering the peak performance of the high performance cores.

More information can be found below or on the Think big.LITTLE microsite

…

Software

Software can control the allocation of threads of execution to the appropriate core, or in some versions of the software simply move the whole processor context up to big or down to LITTLE based on measured load. There are two software approaches to handling the CPU selection decision, described below. In both software approaches, cache coherence is required to enable the software to quickly move execution from LITTLE to big and from big to LITTLE as appropriate. Cache coherence allows one CPU cluster to look up in the caches of the other CPU cluster, and full hardware cache coherence between the two clusters is key to making big.LITTLE software fast and transparent. Cache coherence can be provided by the ARM CCI-400 cache coherent interconnect or any interconnect that follows the AMBA4 ACE protocol.

In a big.LITTLE SoCs, the OS kernel dynamically and seamlessly moves tasks between the ‘big’ and ‘LITTLE’ CPUs. In reality this is an extension of the operating system power management software in wide use today on mobile phone SoCs.

Most OS kernels already support Symmetric Multi-core Processing (SMP) and those techniques can easily be extended to support big.LITTLE systems. There are two main variants of big.LITTLE software scheduling.

big.LITTLE CPU Migration [Linaro internal: IKS (In Kernel Switcher) or simply the big.LITTLE.Switcher project]

In CPU migration a whole workload of a CPU gets move to a differently CPU, once the OS detects it requires more or less performance. This builds on generic techniques in an OS to wake up and put to sleep CPUs in an SMP system. The key extension is around the detection that a CPU is running at maximum frequency while still requesting further performance and thus the workload needs to be moved to a ‘bigger’ CPU. Once the workload has reduced, it can moved back to a ‘smaller’ CPU.

This CPU migration software is available today from Linaro [was released to Linaro partners on Dec 20, 2012 as part of Linaro 12.2 release], and is being actively developed by multiple ARM partners [while Linaro continues to fix bugs on it].

big.LITTLE MP [the final name now is Global Task Scheduling (GTS)]

Task migration (aka big.LITTLE MP [as in the Linaro internal project]) detects a high intensity task and will schedule that onto a ‘big’ CPU. Similarly it will detect a low intensity task and move this back to a ‘LITTLE’ core.

The advantage of task migration over CPU migration is that a system can benefit from all its CPU at the same time, if the processing demands are extremely high. For example in a 2x ‘big’ + 2x ‘LITTLE’ system all 4 CPUs can be used at peak demand times, where as CPU migration would only be able to use 2 CPUs.

[According to Vincent Guittot at Linaro Connect 2013 (March 4 –8) in Hong Kong Linaro will release mid of 2013 the big.LITTLE MP prototype for external testing]

ARM and Linaro have been developing Linux support for both migration models. For more information go to:

big.LITTLE CPU migration
https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/KernelArchived/Big.Little.Switcher
big.LITTLE task migration, see https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/PowerManagement/Big.Little.MP

…

Embedded Linux Conference 2013 – In Kernel Switcher [IKS]: A Solution [TheLinuxFoundation YouTube channel, recorded Feb 22, published March 1, 2013], slides are downloadable in PDF format

The Linux Foundation Embedded Linux Conference 2013 In Kernel Switcher: A Solution to Support ARM’s New big.LITTLE Implementation By Matheiu Poirer San Francisco, California The ‘In Kernel Switcher’ (IKS) is a solution developed by Linaro and ARM to support ARMâ€™s new big.LITTLE implementation. It is pairing together an A7 (LITTLE) and an A15 (big) processor into a logical entity that is then presented to the kernel as one CPU. From there the solution is seeking to achieve optimal performance and power consumption by switching between the big or the LITTLE core based on system usage. This session will present the IKS solution. After giving an overview of the big.LITTLE processor we will present the solution itself, how frequencies are masqueraded to the cpufreq core, the steps involved in doing a â€œswitchâ€ between cores and some of the optimisation made to the interactive governor. The session will conclude by presenting the results that we obtained as well as a brief overview of Linaro’s upstreaming plan.

ELC: In-kernel switcher [IKS] for big.LITTLE [LWN.net, Feb 27, 2013]

The ARM big.LITTLE architecture has been the subject of a number of LWN articles (here’s another) and conference talks, as well as a fair amount of code. A number of upcoming systems-on-chip (SoCs) will be using the architecture, so some kind of near-term solution for Linux support is needed. Linaro’s Mathieu Poirier came to the 2013Embedded Linux Conference to describe that interim solution: the in-kernel switcher.

Two kinds of CPUs

Big.LITTLE incorporates architecturally similar CPUs that have different power and performance characteristics. The similarity must consist of a one-to-one mapping between instruction sets on the two CPUs, so that code can “migrate seamlessly”, Poirier said. Identical CPUs are grouped into clusters.

The SoC he has been using for testing consists of three Cortex-A7 CPUs (LITTLE: less performance, less power consumption) in one cluster and two Cortex-A15s (big) in the other. The SoC was deliberately chosen to have a different number of processors in the clusters as a kind of worst case to catch any problems that might arise from the asymmetry. Normally, one would want the same number of processors in each cluster, he said.

The clusters are connected with a cache-coherent interconnect, which can snoop the cache to keep it coherent between clusters. There is an interrupt controller on the SoC that can route any interrupt from or to any CPU. In addition, there is support in the SoC for I/O coherency that can be used to keep GPUs or other external processors cache-coherent, but that isn’t needed for Linaro’s tests.

The idea behind big.LITTLE is to provide a balance between power consumption and performance. The first idea was to run CPU-hungry tasks on the A15s, and less hungry tasks on the A7s. Unfortunately, it is “hard to predict the future”, Poirier said, which made it difficult to make the right decisions because there is no way to know what tasks are CPU intensive ahead of time.

Two big.LITTLE approaches

That led Linaro to a two-pronged approach to solving the problem: Heterogeneous Multi-Processing (HMP) and the In-Kernel Switcher (IKS). The two projects are running in parallel and are both in the same kernel tree. Not only that, but you can enable either on the kernel command line or switch at run time via sysfs.

With HMP, all of the cores in the SoC can be used at the same time, but the scheduler needs to be aware of the capabilities of the different processors to make its decisions. It will lead to higher peak performance for some workloads, Poirier said. HMP is being developed in the open, and anyone can participate, which means it will take somewhat longer before it is ready, he said.

IKS is meant to provide a “solution for now”, he said, one that can be used to build products with. The basic idea is that one A7 and one A15 are coupled into a single virtual CPU. Each virtual CPU in the system will then have the same capabilities, thus isolating the core kernel from the asymmetry of big.LITTLE. That means much less code needs to change.

Only one of the two processors in a virtual CPU is active at any given time, so the decision on which of the two to use can be made at the CPU frequency (cpufreq) driver level. IKS was released to Linaro members in December 2012, and is “providing pretty good results”, Poirier said.

An alternate way to group the processors would be to put all the A15s together and all the A7s into another group. That turned out to be too coarse as it was “all or nothing” in terms of power and performance. There was also a longer synchronization period needed when switching between those groups. Instead, it made more sense to integrate “vertically”, pairing A7s with A15s.

For the test SoC, the “extra” A7 was powered off, leaving two virtual CPUs to use. The processors are numbered (A15_0, A15_1, A7_0, A7_1) and then paired up (i.e. {A15_0, A7_0}) into virtual CPUs; “it’s not rocket science”, Poirier said. One processor in each group is turned off, but only the cpufreq driver and the switching logic need to know that there are more physical processors than virtual processors.

The virtual CPU presents a list of operating frequencies that encompass the range of frequencies that both A7 and A15 can operate at. While the numbers look like frequencies (ranging from 175MHz to 1200MHz in the example he gave), they don’t really need to be as they are essentially just indexes into a table in the cpufreq driver. The driver maps those values to a real operating point for one of the two processors.

Switching CPUs

The cpufreq core is not aware of the big.LITTLE architecture, so the driver does a good bit of work, Poirier said, but the code for making the switching decision is simple. If the requested frequency can’t be supported by the current processor, switch to the other. That part is eight lines of code, he said.

For example, if virtual CPU 0 is running on the A7 at 200MHz and a request comes in to go to 1.2GHz, the driver recognizes that the A7 cannot support that. In that case, it decides to power down the A7 (which is called the outbound processor) and power up the A15 (inbound). There is a synchronization process that happens as part of the transition so that the inbound processor can use the existing cache. That process is described in Poirier’s slides [PDF], starting at slide 17.

The outbound processor powers up the inbound and continues executing normal kernel/user-space code until it receives the “inbound alive” signal. After sending that signal, the inbound processor initializes both the cluster and interconnect if it is the first in its cluster (i.e. the other processor of the same type, in the other virtual CPU is powered down). It then waits for a signal from the outbound processor.

Once the outbound processor receives “inbound alive” signal, the blackout period (i.e. time when no kernel or user code is running on the virtual CPU) begins. The outbound processor disables interrupts, migrates the interrupt signals to the inbound processor, then saves the current CPU context. Once that’s done, it signals the inbound processor, which restores the context, enables interrupts, and continues executing from where the outbound processor left off. All of that is possible because the instruction sets of the two processors are identical.

As part of its cleanup, the outbound processor creates a new stack for itself so that it won’t interfere with the inbound. It then flushes the local cache and checks to see if it is the last one standing in its cluster; if so, it flushes the cluster cache and disables the cache-coherent interconnect. It then powers itself off.

There are some pieces missing from the picture that he painted, Poirier said, including “vlocks” and other mutual exclusion mechanisms to handle simultaneous desired cluster power states. Also missing was discussion of the “early poke” mechanism as well as code needed to track the CPU and cluster states.

Performance

One of Linaro’s main targets is Android, so it used the interactive power governor for its testing. Any governor will work, he said, but will need to be tweaked. A second threshold (hispeed_freq2) was added to the interactive governor to delay going into “overdrive” on the A15 too quickly as those are “very power hungry” states.

For testing, BBench was used. It gives a performance score based on how fast web pages are loaded. That was run with audio playing in the background. The goal was to get 90% of the performance of two A15s, while using 60% of the power, which was achieved. Different governor parameters gave 95% performance with 65% of the power consumption.

It is important to note that tuning is definitely required—without it you can do worse than the performance of two A7s. “If you don’t tune, all efforts are wasted”, Poirier said. The interactive governor has 15-20 variables, but Linaro mainly concentrated on hispeed_load and hispeed_freq (and the corresponding*2 parameters added for handling overdrive). The basic configuration had the virtual CPU run on the A7 until the load reached 85%, when it would switch to the first six (i.e. non-overdrive) frequencies on the A15. After 95% load, it would use the two overdrive frequencies.

The upstreaming process has started, with the cluster power management code getting “positive remarks” on the ARM Linux mailing list. The goal is to upstream the code entirely, though some parts of it are only available to Linaro members at the moment. The missing source will be made public once a member ships a product using IKS. But, IKS is “just a stepping stone”, Poirier said, and “HMP will blow this out of the water”. It may take a while before HMP is ready, though, so IKS will be available in the meantime.

Exynos Octa and why you need to stop the drama about the 8 cores [XDA Developers, March 15, 2013]

I’m going to write this as an guide/information page so we stop as soon as possible the stupid discussions about how 8 cores are useless.

What’s it all about?

The Exynos Octa or Exynos 5410 is a big.LITTLE design engineered by ARM and is the first consumer implementation of this technology. Samsung was their lead partner in terms of bringing this to market first. Reneseas is the other current chip designer who has publicly announced a big.LITTLE design.

Misconception #1: Samsung didn’t design this, ARM did. This is not some stupid marketing gimmick.

The point of the design is to meld the advantages of the A7 processor architectures, with its extreme power efficiency, with the A15 architecture, with extreme performance at a cost of power consumption. The A7 cores are slightly slower than an A9 equivalent, but using much less power. The A15 cores are in another ballpark in terms of performance but their power consumption is also extreme on this current manufacturing generation.

The effective goal is to achieve the best of both worlds. Qualcomm on the other does this by using their own architecture which is similar in some design aspects to the A15 architecture, but compromises on feature and performance to achieve higher power efficiency. The end result is for the user can be expressed in 2 measurements: IPC (Instrucitons per clock), and Perf/W (Performance per Watt).

In terms of IPC, the A15 leads the pack by quite a margin, followed by Krait 400, Krait 300, Krait 200, A9, A7, and A8 cores, in that order.

In terms of Perf/W, the A7 leads by a margin, followed by A9’s and the Krait cores, with the A15 at a distant last in terms of efficiency.

Real-world use

Of course, the Exynos Octa is the first to use this:

Currently, the official word seems to be that the A7 cluster is configured to run from 200 to 1200MHz, and the A15 cluster from 200 to 1600MHz.

There are several use-cases of how the design can be used, and it is purely limited by software, as the hardware configuration is completely flexible.

In-Kernel Switcher (IKS)

This is what most of us will see this in our consumer products this year; Effectively, you only have a virtual quad-core processor. The A15 cores are paired up with the A7 core clusters. Each A15 has a corresponding A7 “partner”. Hardware wise, this pair-up has no physical representation as provided by an actual die-shot of the Exynos Octa.

The IKS does the same thing as a CPU governor. But instead of switching CPU frequency depending on the load, it will switch between CPUs.

Effecively, you are jumping from one performance/power curve to another: And that’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.

The actual implementation is a very simple driver on the side of the kernel which measures load and acts much like a CPU governor.

[PhoneArena YouTube channel, Feb 25, 2013] For more details, check out our web site:http://www.phonearena.com/ PhoneArena presents a video demonstration of the new Samsung Exynos 5 Octa chipset – the manufacturer’s first octa-core processor! As you can imagine, the Exynos 5 Octa is very new and not available in any handset yet, but we expect it to make an appearance in the Galaxy S IV! So, it’s definitely worth checking!

The above is a demonstration; you can see how at most times the A7 cores are used for video playback, simple tasks, and miscellaneous computations. The A15 cores will kick in when there is more demanding load being processed, and then quickly drop out again to the A7 cores when it’s not doing much anymore.

Misconception #2: You DON’T need to have all 8 cores online, actually, only maximum 4 cores will ever be online at the same time.
Misconception #3: If the workload is thread-light, just as we did hot-plugging on previous CPUs, big.LITTLE pairs will simply remain offline under such light loads. There is no wasted power with power-gating.
Misconception #4: As mentioned, each pair can switch independently of other pairs. It’s not he whole cluster who switches between A15 and A7 cores. You can have only a single A15 online, together with two A7’s, while the fourth pair is completely offline.
Misconception #5: The two clusters have their own frequency planes. This means A15 cores all run on one frequency while the A7 cores can be running on another. However, inside of the frequency planes, all cores run at the same frequency, meaning there is only one frequency for all cores of a type at a time.

Heterogeneous Multi-Processing (HMP)

This is the other actual implemented function mode of a big.LITTLE CPU. In this case, all 8 cores can be used simultaneously by the system.

This is a vastly more complex working mechanism, and its implementation is also an order of magnitude more sophisticated. It requires the kernel scheduler to actually be aware of the differentiation of between the A7 and A15 cores. Currently, the Linux kernel is not capable of doing this and treats all CPUs as equals. This is a problem since we do not want to use the A15 cores when a task can simply me processed on an A7 core with a much lower power cost.

The Linaro working-group already finished the first implementation of the HMP design as a series of patches to be applied against the Linux 3.8 kernel. What they did is to make the scheduler smart enough to be able to track the load of single process entities, and with that information to schedule the threads smartly on either the A7 cores or the A15 cores. This achieves much lower latency in terms of switching workloads, or better said, switching the environments (CPUs) to the respective work-loads, and exposes the full processing capabilities of the silicon as all cores can be used at once.

You can follow the advancements of this in the publications of the Linaro Connect summits that happen every few months. The code was only published in the middle of February this year for the first working implementation equivalent in power consumption to the IKS.

Misconception #6: Yes the CPU is a true 8-core processor. It’s just not being used as such in its initial software implementations

big.LITTLE In Kernel Switcher [IKS] by Nicolas Pitre and Viresh Kumar [Charbax YouTube channel, March 16, 2013]

Nicolas Pitre and Viresh Kumar are part of the core team from Linaro that is working on developing future solutions for the latest ARM architecture: big LITTLE. Here they discuss some of the internals of the famous IKS solution. They are joined by Naresh Kamboju who is part of QA team working for Linaro. This team including few more got “Outstanding team for 2012 for their work on IKS”. Filmed at Linaro Connect 2013 [March 4-8] in Hong Kong.

Vincent Guittot on the Linaro big.LITTLE MP work [Charbax YouTube channel, April 1, 2013]

Vincent Guittot, Linaro assignee from ST-Ericsson, talks about the work that is being done at Linaro to Extend the Linux kernel to support ARM’s big.LITTLE MP architecture, building on the features provided by the big.LITTLE Switcher project. The most powerful use model of big.LITTLE is called MP and enables the use of all physical cores at the same time. Threads with high priority and/or computationally intensive can in this case be allocated to the A15 cores while threads with less priority or less computationally intensive such as background tasks can be performed by the A7 cores. Filmed at Linaro Connect 2013 [March 4-8] in Hong Kong.

The future of mobile gaming at GDC 2013 and elsewhere

April 6, 2013 1:05 pm / 2 Comments on The future of mobile gaming at GDC 2013 and elsewhere

Laszlo Kishonti at MWC 2013 (see the video embedded later, as well as the CLBenchmark data supporting the below statement):

[1:20] Currently Mali T-600 is the first and only GPU which can run this desktop grade software. [1:27]

The Great Equalizer 3: How Fast is Your Smartphone/Tablet in PC GPU Terms [AnandTech, April 4, 2013]

… At the end of the day I’d say it’s safe to assume the current crop of high-end ultra mobile devices [T604 based Nexus 10, Adreno 320 as in Nexus 4, Tegra 3 T33 @1.6GHz as in HTC One X+] can deliver GPU performance similar to that of mid to high-end GPUs from 2006.

The caveat there is that we have to be talking about performance in workloads that don’t have the same memory bandwidth demands as the games from that same era. While compute power has definitely kept up (as has memory capacity), memory bandwidth is no where near as good as it was on even low end to mainstream cards from that time period. For these ultra mobile devices to really shine as gaming devices, it will take a combination of further increasing compute as well as significantly enhancing memory bandwidth. Apple (and now companies like Samsung as well) has been steadily increasing memory bandwidth on its mobile SoCs for the past few generations, but it will need to do more. I suspect the mobile SoC vendors will take a page from the console folks and/or Intel and begin looking at embedded/stacked DRAM options over the coming years to address this problem.

Hisilicon K3V3 to use Mali-T658 GPU, ten times the performance of Mali-400 MP [GSM Insider, March 27, 2013]

At the Mobile World Congress 2013, many people expected Huawei to unveil the Hisilicon K3V3 processor. But the upcoming processor from the Chinese company is yet to unveil to date.

According to sources from China [obviously from this SHUMABAOBEI.NET article of March 26], the Hisilicon K3V3 processor is based on the 28nm technology and it is a quad-core processor. The Hisilicon is able to clock up to 1.8GHz. It has two sets of dual-core processor. The first set is an A15 architecture dual-core and the second set is an A7 architecture dual-core processor.

The most important is the GPU inside the Hisilicon. Sources reported that the Hisilicon K3V3 comes with Mali-T658 GPU. ARM stated that the Mali-T658 has ten times better performance than the Mali-400 MP and four times better than the Mali-T604. The Exynos 4412 in Samsung Galaxy S3 and Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is using the Mali-400 MP GPU.

Look like the Hisilicon K3V3 is focusing on the graphics rather than on the numbers of core. The Hisilicon K3V3 could launch in second quarter of the year.

Related information:
–Mali-T658 GPU Extends Graphics And GPU Compute Leadership For High Performance Devices [press release, Nov 10, 2011] “To address high-end consumer requirements, the Mali-T658 GPU delivers up to ten times the graphics performance of the Mali-400 MP GPU, found in a wide range of today’s mainstream consumer products. It also features four times the GPU Compute performance of the Mali-T604 GPU, enabling a raft of new use-cases outside of traditional graphics processing, including computational photography, image-processing and augmented reality. … The ability of the Mali-T658 GPU to scale up to eight cores provides unprecedented energy-efficiency, flexibility and scalability to match the CPU and GPU performance points through one coherent interface.”
– ARM Mali-T658 GPU Arrives at the Japan Technical Symposium [ARM Multimedia blog, Nov 10, 2011] “It’s all about higher performance – twice as many shader cores and double the arithmetic pipelines per core [as the Mali-T604].”
– ARM’s Mali-T658 GPU in 2013, Up to 10x Faster than Mali-400 [AnandTech, Nov 9, 2011] which contains the following ARM roadmap clearly accelerated by a year or so, especially with the 2nd generation Mali T-600 Series 9 months later. Currently it is not clear why Mali-T658 is missing as a product on the ARM site. One reason might be that it was replaced by the more flexible 2nd generation Mal-T600 Series, especially since the PoP availability for that since January 2013 (see below).
– Hisilicon Licenses Range of ARM Mali Graphics Processors to Drive the Next-Generation of Smart Connected Devices [joint press release, May 21, 2012] “… including the market leading Mali-400 MP GPU and the latest high-performance Mali-T658 GPU.”
– Nufront and ARM Extend Partnership to Provide OEMs with Competitive Solutions for Next-Generation Smartphones, Tablets and Smart-TVs [joint press release, Sept 24, 2012] “Nufront has broadened its portfolio of ARM technology with licenses for the ARM^® Cortex™-A15 MPCore™ Processor and ARM Mali™-T658 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU).”

Mali-T600 Series Completing the ARM 64-bit System Story [ARM Multimedia blog, Oct 30, 2012]

Today ARM announced the ARM^® Cortex™-A50 processor series, which include ARMs first low-power 64-bit implementations of the ARMv8 architecture. These highly anticipated products bring with them not only an enhanced 32-bit CPU architecture but also open up the wider range of opportunities that 64-bit architectures offer for high performance energy efficient devices.

…

The second generation of the Cortex/Mali pairing – the Cortex-A15 and Mali-T604 is appearing now in consumer devices from Google (Samsung Chromebook and Nexus 10 Tablet) based on the Samsung Exynos 5250 which enables, like its predecessors, market leading devices in a wide range of markets

…

The combination of the Cortex-A50 and the Mali-T600 series brings to market the highest performance CPU/GPU pairing targeting energy efficient devices. The Mali-T600 series is already able to support 64-bit addressing and offers IEEE 754 compliant 64-bit floating point arithmetic; so really is “64-bit system” ready. This opens up the potential for developers to get started earlier on the GPU elements with real silicon. The Mali-T600 series of products have all been designed with support for the latest ARMv8 architecture for both 32-bit (AArch32) and 64-bit mode(AArch64). This close functional matching will become even more important as GPU Computing opens up more exciting use cases over the coming years, and ARM will continue to focus on delivering leading processor and system IP that silicon vendors can rapidly deploy. Keep watching..

Mali-T604 [ARM microsite, Nov 8, 2012]

This fourth-generation of Mali embedded graphics IP, designed to meet the needs of General Purpose computing on GPU (GPGPU), extends API support to include full profile as well as embedded Khronos™ OpenCL™ and Microsoft® DirectX®.

…

Performance

The Mali-T604 GPU delivers up to 5x performance improvement over previous Mali graphics processors and is scalable up to four cores

…

Mali Graphics plus GPU Compute
[ARM microsite, Nov 7, 2012]

ARM Mali Graphics with GPU Compute provides premium graphics solutions to high end electronic devices. The graphics performance capability of these products is higher than Graphics only roadmap. ARM Mali Graphics with GPU Compute Midgard Tri-pipe architecture and includes the Mali-T678, Mali-T628 and the Mali-T624.

See also: “The GPU king is doing well, long live Mali-450 MP” [ARM Multimedia blog, June 18, 2012]

ARM Launches Second Generation of MALI-T600 Graphics Processors Driving Improved User Experience for Tablets, Smartphones and Smart-TVs [press release, Aug 6, 2012]

Each of the products features a 50% performance increase* and are the first to include Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression (ASTC), a texture compression technique that originated from ARM. ASTC significantly optimizes GPU performance and increases battery life in devices, enabling an always-on, always-connected experience, and has now been adopted by the Khronos™ Group, an important industry consortium that focuses on open standards.

…

ARM continues to invest in GPU compute capabilities by integrating the leadership that ARM has in the CPU space, with ARM Cortex™ processors, and applying it to the Mali GPU architecture. GPU compute enables greater control when balancing tasks between the CPU and GPU, allowing performance of the right task by the most efficient architecture. This enables improved energy-efficiency for current and new math intensive activities, such as:

Computational photography: computational methods of enhancing or extending digital photography

Multi perspective views: the ability to have multiple views from different positions

Real-time photo editing on mobile devices: photo editing at your fingertips on your smartphone, tablet, etc.

GPU compute also extends the range of use cases possible on mass-market mobile devices, allowing features like photo editing and video stabilization to be available in a wider range of consumer products.

…

*Each of the second generation Mali-T600 Series GPUs features a 50% performance increase compared to first generation Mali-T600 products (based on industry standard benchmarks), on the same silicon process. This 50% increase has been facilitated by a combination of frequency improvements, such as optimizing the register transfer level (RTL) for increased performance, and micro-architectural improvements so that graphics are executed more efficiently.

The design of each new product addresses different performance points:

ARM Mali-T624/Mali-T628

The Mali-T624 GPU offers scalability from one to four cores, whilst the Mali-T628 from one to eight cores provides up to twice the graphics and GPU compute performance of the Mali-T624, extending the graphics potential for smartphones and smart-TVs. These products provide breathtaking graphical displays for advanced consumer applications, such as 3D graphics, visual computing and real time photo editing for smartphones and smart-TVs.

ARM Mali-T678

The ARM Mali-T678 GPU offers the highest GPU compute performance available in the Mali-T600 Series of products, delivering a four-fold increase when compared with the Mali-T624 GPU through features, such as increased ALU support. This brings a wide range of performance points to address the vibrant tablet market. The Mali-T678 offers energy-efficient high-end visual computing applications, such as computational photography, multi perspective views and augmented reality.

What is ASTC?

ASTC supports a very wide range of pixel formats and bit rates, and enables significantly higher quality than most other formats currently in use. This allows the designer to use texture compression throughout the application, and to choose the optimal format and bit rate for each use case. This highly efficient texture compression standard reduces the already market-leading Mali GPU memory bandwidth and memory footprint even further, while extending mobile battery life.

All products are designed to support the following APIs; OpenGL® ES 1.1, OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 3.0, DirectX 11 FL 9_3, DirectX® 11, OpenCL™ 1.1 Full Profile and Google Renderscript compute.

ARM Announces 8-core 2nd Gen Mali-T600 GPUs [AnandTech, Aug 6, 2012]

…

Both the T628 and T678 are eight-core parts, the primary difference between the two (and between graphics/GPU compute optimized ARM GPUs in general) is the composition of each shader core. The T628 features two ALUs, a LSU and texture unit per shader, while the T658 doubles up the ALUs per core.

Long term you can expect high end smartphones to integrate cores from the graphics & compute optimized roadmap, while the mainstream and lower end smartphones wll pick from the graphics-only roadmap. All of this sounds good on paper, however there’s still the fact that we’re talking about the second generation of Mali-T600 GPUs before the first generation has even shipped. We will see the first gen Mali-T600 parts before the end of the year, but there’s still a lot of room for improvement in the way mobile GPUs and SoCs are launched…

ARM Announces POP IP Technology for Mali-T600 Series GPUs [press release, Oct 11, 2012]

What: ARM® today introduced the first POP™ IP solution for ARM Mali™-T600 series graphics processor units (GPUs). This latest offering of POP IP — core-hardening acceleration technology that produces the best implementations of ARM processors in the fastest time-to-market — is optimized for the Mali-T628 and Mali-T678 on TSMC 28nm HPM process technology. Mali GPUs go into a variety of end devices, including a wide range of smartphones, from high performance to mass market, as well as tablets and smart TVs. It is critical that designers can optimize their Mali GPU for their selected end applications.

Developed in synergistic collaboration by ARM’s Media Processing and Physical IP divisions, the optimized POP IP technology has been created to produce the most efficient GPU implementations at 28nm. The POP IP enabled Mali-T600 series GPU implementation results in superior performance density/watt, and significant silicon savings. Benefits of this POP IP have been proven to deliver up to 27 percent higher frequency, 24 percent lower area, and 19 percent lower power than implementations which do not use POP IP.

POP IP technology is comprised of three critical elements necessary to achieve an optimized ARM processor or GPU implementation. First, it contains Artisan® physical IP standard cell logic and memory cache instances that are specifically tuned for a given ARM processor and foundry technology. Second, it includes a comprehensive benchmarking report to document the exact conditions and results ARM achieved for the processor implementation across an envelope of configuration and design targets. Finally, it includes the detailed implementation knowledge including floor plans, scripts, design utilities and a POP implementation guide, which enables the end customer to achieve similar results quickly and with lower risk.

Why: “As the industry moves toward 28nm, designers need options that can lower their risk and help them achieve the fastest time-to-market. ARM is pleased to bring the benefits that have been experienced with POP IP usage around Cortex process implementation to Mali GPUs,” said Pete Hutton, general manager, Media Processing Division at ARM. “POP IP for Mali GPUs is not about pre-determined benchmarks, it’s about giving our partners greater flexibility by leveraging ARM’s holistic approach to explore and find the right optimization customized to the specific end-application.”

When: The POP IP for Mali-T628 and T678 on TSMC 28HPM process is available for immediate license to both existing and new licensees. The IP will be available in January 2013.

How does Mali POP help …. from: Mali POP IP Efficient GPU implementations [Dec 5, 2012]

ARM Mali-T628 & TSMC 28nm HPM can be used in multiple target applications.
– The sheer number of available options can make selection difficult.
ARM has invested significant time & effort in investigating the ARM Mali-T62x PPA envelope
ARM have performed all our analysis using real GPU work load which has led to improvements in implementation and analysis

ARM and Synopsys Collaborate to Optimize ARM Mali GPU 20nm Implementation [joint press release, Feb 25, 2013]

Highlights:

Combination of ARM^® Artisan^® physical IP, Mali^™ GPU IP and Synopsys Galaxy Implementation Platform proven ready for 20nm and smaller
On-going collaboration aims to optimize and deliver double patterning technology (DPT)-ready methodology for Mali GPU implementation
First implementation of the Mali-T600 series of products in 20nm technologies, with learning from this implementation accelerating the product family into sub-20nm technologies

ARM (LON: ARM; Nasdaq: ARMH) and Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq: SNPS) today announced a collaboration to optimize performance of ARM® Mali™ graphics processing units (GPUs) in 20-nanometer (nm) and smaller process geometries using the Synopsys Galaxy™ Implementation Platform. The companies successfully taped out the first ARM Mali-T658 design using a 20nm process technology, ARM Artisan® physical IP and shader functionality. The resulting RTL-through-sign-off design flow includes double-patterning support throughout. The ongoing collaboration will help designers optimize the implementation of Mali GPUs for their target applications.

“Mali GPUs are found in most Android™ tablets and smart digital TVs currently shipping, and are one of the most popular graphics solutions for smartphones. Users’ demand for advanced graphics continues to increase, which means that optimizing GPUs for selected end devices is essential,” said Pete Hutton, general manager, Media Processing Division, ARM. “Building on a long history of successful collaborations with Synopsys, this implementation will enable designers to optimally implement ARM Mali-T600 family GPUs using Synopsys tools in sub 20nm leading-edge process technologies.”

The Mali-T600 series includes five members (Mali-T604, Mali-T624, Mali-T628, Mali-T658 and Mali-T678), which have all been designed to provide exceptional graphics performance and they feature the first graphics technology to bring GPU compute functionality into mobile devices. This combined functionality brings additional hardware complexity which is further compounded by the new double-patterning requirements introduced by 20nm and below technologies.

Smaller process technologies, such as 20nm and below, require a highly integrated design flow for fast closure while delivering optimal results. The collaboration used the Galaxy Implementation Platform to produce a methodology tuned for the Mali GPU with ARM Artisan physical IP in 20nm. Primary tools used included Synopsys’ Design Compiler^® synthesis, Formality^® formal verification, DFTMAX^™ and TetraMAX^® test, IC Compiler^™ layout, StarRC^™ extraction and PrimeTime^® timing analysis and signoff. In addition, IC Validator In-Design capabilities for physical verification were used during the implementation process to speed design closure. The methodology also benefitted from the use of DC Explorer & Dataflow Analyzer to perform early exploration, especially of floorplans and macro placement so critical to GPU performance.

“Twenty-nanometer and smaller process technologies introduce new complexity requiring early and deep technical collaboration among semiconductor ecosystem partners,” said Antun Domic, senior vice president and general manager, Implementation Group, Synopsys. “Through this collaboration with ARM, the Synopsys Galaxy Implementation Platform with In-Design physical verification combines with the ARM Mali IP and Artisan physical IP to provide a proven, DPT-compliant solution that will help accelerate the time to design closure on complex SoCs at 20 nanometers and below.”

ARM Mali SeeMore Demo: Lighting Effects, OpenGL ES 3 & Enlighten Engine – GDC 2013 [ARMflix YouTube channel, March 28, 2013]

Stacy Smith, Senior Software Engineer at ARM, shows us the SeeMore demo running on an Insignal Arndale Development Board (Samsung Exynos 5 Dual – quadcore ARM Mali-T604 GPU and dualcore ARM Cortex-A15). Features include animation effects, texture projection, constant changing lighting and effects with the Enlighten engine.

More information:
– Mali Developer Tools, Augmented Reality, Lighting, SDKs & More at GDC [ARM Multimedia blog, April 2, 2013]
– Meet the experts in mobile graphics at GDC 2013 [With Imagination Blog, March 20, 2013]
– Imagination delivers latest version of leading tools for game development at GDC 2013 [press release, March 25, 2013]

Kishonti CLBenchmark Mali-T600 GPU Compute (MWC 2013) [ARMflix YouTube channel, March 5, 2013]

Kishonti Informatics demonstrates ARM Mali-T600 with GPU Compute running desktop-grade software.

Source: CLBenchmark Results Database as of April 6, 2013.
– Intel® Core™ i3-3240 Processor (2 cores, 4 threads, 3M Cache, 3.40 GHz)
– Intel® Celeron® Processor B820 (2 cores, 2 threads, 2M Cache, 1.70 GHz)
– AMD A4-5300 (2 cores, 1M Cache, 3.40 GHz)
– AMD A6-4400M (2 cores, 1M cache, 2.7 GHz)
The interpretation of the above benchmark apps see at the very end of this post

Note that in pure GLbenchmark performances against the latest Apple tablet the T604 is underperforming and even not significantly higher against some other tablets:

Nexus 10 GPU: Mali T604 (four cores) @500MHz
iPad Mini GPU: SGX543MP2 (two cores) @250MHz
iPad (4th generation) GPU: SGX554MP4 (four cores) @300MHz
iPad (iPad 3) GPU: SGX543MP4 (four cores) @250MHz
Onda V812 and Onda V972 have an SGX544MP2 (two cores) GPU

This might explain quite well why ARM was heavily pushing ahead with its 2nd generation T600 Series. (See also AllWinner A31 and A31s with PowerVR graphics [my other ‘USD 99 Allwinner’ blog, Jan 3 – March 29, 2013] for complete understanding of Imaginations’s PowerVR competition).

OpenCL benchmark CLBenchmark running on Google Nexus 10 (Android 4.2.1)! [KishontiLtd YouTube channel, Feb 12, 2013]

CLBenchmark 1.1.2 Desktop Edition running on Google Nexus 10 (Mali T-604 GPU) with the currently available stock Android version (4.2.1): world’s first OpenCL-enabled tablet! The result is fully comparable to results of desktop devices. See the detailed result at the website: http://clbenchmark.com/device-info.jsp?config=14669863&test=CLB10101 CLBenchmark 1.1 Desktop Edition is an easy-to-use tool for comparing the computational performance of different platforms. It offers an unbiased way of testing and comparing the performance of implementations of OpenCL 1.1, a royalty-free standard for heterogeneous parallel programming maintained by Khronos Group. CLBenchmark compares the strengths and weaknesses of different hardware architectures such as CPUs, GPUs and APUs. The test results are listed in a transparent and public OpenCL performance database. http://www.clbenchmark.com

ARM Mali-T604 GPU running OpenCL at MWC13 [LEAPconf YouTube channel, Feb 27, 2013]

At Mobile World Congress 2013 ARM were showing the Kishonti desktop OpenCL benchmark running on the Insignal Arndale board. The Arndale board features the Samsung Exynos dual Cortex-A15 SoC which includes quad-core Mali-T604 GPU. The Mali-T604 is able to run the desktop benchmark as it supports OpenCL 1.1 full profile. For more info on Low-Energy Application Parallelism, visit: http://www.LEAPconf.com

The Future of Mobile Gaming Panel Interview at GDC 2013 [ARMflix YouTube channel, April 3, 2013]

We interviewed panelists of “The Future of Mobile Gaming” panel at GDC 2013 to get their opinions and key takeaways. Panelists: Baudouin Corman, VP of Publishing, Americas, Gameloft (1:33); Niccolo De Masi, President and CEO, Glu Mobile (0:11); Jason Della Rocca, Co-Founder / Indie Evangelist, Execution Labs (Moderator) (2:49); Chris Doran, Founder & COO, Geomerics (7:12), David Helgason, Co-Founder & CEO, Unity Technologies Michael Ludden, Senior Manager, Samsung Developers (4:38); Nizar Romdhane, Director of Ecosystem, Media Processing Division, ARM (8:01); Jasper Smith, Founder and CEO, PlayJam Inc.(5:48)

More information: What is the Future of Mobile Gaming? GDC Panel Summary [ARM Multimedia blog, April 3, 2013]

… The panel got off to a fine start with a debate on the importance of AAA gaming in the mobile space. This brought out a range of opinions from AAA being the main path for mobile and the mobile experience, with many believing that consumers are looking for bigger and better experiences from gaming on their mobile devices, and that AAA is key in creating the ‘wow’ factor for the next generation mobile devices.

Consumers will need high-end content like AAA quality games to drive the use of higher performance mobile devices. The alternative opinion was that with innovation being applied to casual gaming, the expectation is that we will move away from the current categories of games with an even larger number of gaming categories – with elements of regional aspects being built into the gaming experience. David from Unity talked about how short the half-life of games were at only 2 years compared to films which are 5-10 years. …

Remark: AAA Game [By Warren Schultz, About.com Guide, May 23, 2012]

A AAA game, or pronounced “triple-A game”, is generally a title developed by a large studio, funded by a massive budget.

These games will have a marketing budget in the multiple-millions of dollars, and are planned to earn out in excess of one million titles sold. Investors/publishers expect a multiple-of-cost return on their investment. In order to recoup general development costs, publishers will generally produce the title for the major platforms (currently Xbox 360, PS3, and PC) to maximize profits, unless it is a console exclusive, in which case the console maker will pay for exclusivity to offset the loss of potential profit to the developer.

Pronunciation: triple-A game

Glue Mobile representative in the beginning of the above video is essentially stating that mobile only gaming sooner or later would disrupt the console industry. So it is worth to take a look at the relevant excerpts from Glu Mobile Corporate Overview, Presentation at Roth Capital Investor Conference [March 18, 2013]:

Interpret’s New GameByte™ Data Shows Only Half of All Gamers Play Retail Console Games [Interpret LLC press release via BusinessWire, April 4, 2013]

Interpret, a leading entertainment, media and technology market research firm, today announced top-level findings from GameByte™, a syndicated study designed to understand cross-platform digital gaming adoption and behavior in ten global markets.

The service, now in its second year, studies consumers (age 6-64) of every form of video gaming, including both traditional retail business models and digital business models. The latest data reveals that 96% of all US gamers have played some form of digital game in the past six months. By contrast, only 53% of US gamers have played a traditional retail console game in the same period.

“The trend carries across all ten countries covered by GameByte,” said Jason Coston, senior analyst at Interpret. “If you’re a gamer, you’re a digital gamer. Retail console games still capture a significant portion of gamers, but several digital business models now command just as much market share: mobile game apps, social network games on PC, and casual games on PC.”

GameByte data also confirms the ubiquity of digital gaming in other countries traditionally focused on consoles, such as the UK and Japan. Ninety-four percent of UK gamers now play digital games, as well as 87% of Japanese gamers.

Interpret will soon roll out in-depth reports covering revenue sizes and gaming attitude and behavior in each territory over the coming months.

What Forced Riccitiello Out at Electronic Arts? [Bloomberg YouTube channel, March 18, 2013]

Electronic Arts said John Riccitiello stepped down as chief executive officer and will leave the board. Cory Johnson reports on Bloomberg Television’s “Bloomberg West.” (Source: Bloomberg)

EA: Demise of console gaming ‘very premature’ [GameSpot, April 1, 2013]

COO Peter Moore says even though mobile is growing, gamers continue to show enthusiasm for core titles.

The demise of traditional console gaming is not a reality the industry faces, according to Electronic Arts chief operating officer Peter Moore. Speaking with Bloomberg TV, Moore said even though the mobile space has grown, gamers still want core titles they can play on a big screen.

“The console business is still a core part of our business; it’s the majority of our business. The demise of console gaming is very premature as far as we’re concerned,” Moore said.

“We still have thousands of people focused on developing current-generation Xbox 360 and PS3 games, as well as people focused now on the next generation when that finally arrives,” he added. “And so, people still want core games. People want to sit back in their living rooms, take advantage of their HD TVs, and and play fully immersive games like [Battlefield 4].“

Also during the interview, Moore said he expects EA’s digital sales–which includes mobile, downloadable content, and subscriptions–to possibly overtake its traditional packaged goods business by 2015.

“In two years we could be looking at the tipping point where digital becomes bigger than the traditional core,” Moore said.

Moore is believed to be a leading candidate to take over as the next EA CEO. He would not comment on this conjecture, but praised John Riccitiello for leaving the company in “tremendous shape.” Moore said one thing the new EA CEO needs to do is execute.

“We did not executive to the level that we needed to in [fiscal year 2013] and [John Riccitiello] took accountability for that. And I think the future CEO will focus on pure execution because all the ingredients are there; we have the world’s best developers, we have a tremendous publishing pipeline, and we’ve made the hard decisions about our platform.

Meet the ARM Mali-T604 [ARMflix YouTube channel, Nov 10, 2010]

ARM TechCon 2012 – Consumer Products Announced based on ARM Mali-T604 [ARMflix YouTube channel, Nov 5, 2012]

Kevin Smith, VP Strategic Marketing, Media Processing Division, ARM talks about recent announcements and product releases of consumers products released and starting to ship based on ARM Cortex-A15 CPU and ARM Mali-T604 GPU

The Mali-T604 is available only with Samsung Electronics as per Global Businesses Select ARM Mali GPU Technology [News on the Mali Developer Center of ARM, Feb 25, 2013]

Samsung Electronics

“Samsung Smart TV has been leading market in transforming the viewing experiences of consumers in the living room. Through the adoption of the quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 processor and Mali-T604 GPUs, Samsung Smart TV, including the world’s first quad-core built-in F8000, will enable a new way of enjoying content on TV with innovative user interfaces and faster performance,” said Cheul-Hee Hahm, Master of R&D Team, Visual Display Business, Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd.

In 2013 there will be a significant increase in the number of mass market smartphones based on Mali-400 and Mali-450 GPUs, and of high-end phones taking advantage of the high performance of the Mali-T600 family.

ARM® Mali™ Timbuktu2 based on Samsung® Exynos™ 5 Dual [ARMflix YouTube channel, Sept 10, 2012]

Timbuktu2 is a game graphics technology demo that builds on the original Timbuktu. This version highlights the performance and visual advantages of using OpenGL® ES 3.0 on the new Mali-T604 GPU. The Samsung® Exynos™ 5 Dual development board is a dual core Cortex™-A15 CPU and quad-core Mali-T604 GPU test chip.

Note that mobile gaming as one should talk about the new Mali products in a more general context, such as: ARM Mali GPUs turn GPU Compute into reality at MWC [News at Mali Developer Center, Feb 22, 2013]

When:

25^th – 28^th February 2013, MWC, Barcelona, Spain.

Where:

ARM stand at Mobile World Congress, Hall 6 Stand 6A31.

What:

ARM will showcase a range of Mali™ GPU Compute use cases running on devices, demonstrating the benefits of Renderscript and OpenCL.

ARM Mali GPUs are the first to bring the benefits of GPU Compute to mobile devices. ARM is also the first IP vendor to pass OpenCL 1.1 Full Profile Khronos conformance test. GPU Compute ensures that the right task is placed in the right place at the right time, enabling greater performance efficiencies.

In a world where smartphones and tablets act as our primary compute platform for more than accessing the internet and social media, but also used to create and view videos and experience on-the-go gaming, leading companies are discovering new ways to ensure technology is making the phone last longer and do far more than ever before

You’ll discover how running a task on a GPU is faster, while enabling other tasks to be run at the same time. See firsthand how smart allocation of the tasks is far more efficient and is seamless to the user. GPU compute opens up new use cases whilst existing tasks are done more efficiently.

Mali GPUs are the first graphics technology to support Google Renderscript Compute, enabling real devices to bring new exciting features to consumers.

ARM is the first to offer Full Profile OpenCL™ support for mobile devices. ARM will show how OpenCL can be used in applications including high accuracy facial detection and multi-face detection – improving photography on mobile devices as well as creating significant performance improvements.

ARM continues to build a thriving and strong ecosystem around Mali GPU Compute, with strategic collaborations from leaders and experts across the whole industry. This is opening new markets for ARM partners and adding value to Mali GPU Compute users.

Computational Photography

A key initial area to benefit from GPU compute – you will also be able to see the performance improvement possible when real-time image filters are applied to a camera feed and the performance improvements possible by moving the task from the CPU to the GPU. This demonstration shows the accelerations in image processing content made possible by Renderscript. ARM is committed to delivering more performance within a mobile power budget through innovative technologies which ensure a compute task is completed on the most energy efficient processing element. GPU Compute and big.LITTLE™ processing are the most recent examples of new technologies ensuring the right task can be run in the right place in the system.

By supporting GPU Compute ARM Mali GPUs are expanding the potential use cases for tablets and smartphones:

RS Benchmark from Kishonti will run for the first time on a mobile based GPU showing the key features that GPU enables – only possible with Mali-T604

Gaming

GPU Compute is also improving the gaming experience. You will see how a combination of OpenGL® ES 3.0 and OpenCL APIs offer a wider range of effects not seen before on mobile devices. OpenCL opens new levels of physics simulations and OpenGL ES 3.0 showcases effects such as showing the application of high dynamic range, adaptive luminance tone mapping and atmospheric scattering – features only normally seen in PC or console level gaming experiences.

Why:

ARM Mali GPUs are the first GPUs focused on the mobile space showing GPU Compute is a reality. GPU compute will enable:

New use cases previously not possible to perform on a mobile device enhancing the user experience

Make previous tasks more efficient – in conjunction with ARM big.LITTLE technology, GPU Compute is critical to running tasks using the most efficient part of the SoC

Synthesis Super-Resolution Scaler Demo on Exynos 5 Dual Powered Tablet at MWC 2013 [SamsungExynos YouTube channel, March 19, 2013]

This Synthesis Mali™ Super-Resolution Scaler demo is running on an Exynos 5 Dual-powered reference tablet in the ARM booth at Mobile World Congress 2013. Chris Varnsverry, software engineer for ARM, presented the Super-Resolution Scaler demonstration on an Exynos 5 Dual-powered reference tablet. This advanced scaler takes small images and scales them to larger sizes at 1080p, creating a much better quality image than if they were scaled with the original Android Scaler. The high frame rate enabled by the Mali™-T604 GPU ensures that Exynos 5 Dual-run devices have a smooth display experience.

Note that Samsung selected a PowerVR SGX544MP GPU core from for its Samsung Exynos 5410 Octa processor (or simply Exynos 5 Octa) as indicated by The PowerVR SGX544, a modern GPU for today’s leading platforms [With Imagination blog, March 13, 2013]. For other information see Samsung Announces the Availability of Exynos 5 Octa for New Generation of Mobile Devices [Samsung Semiconductor press release, March 15, 2013]. This first big.LITTLE processor, also first by being manufactured using Samsung’s latest 28-nanometer (nm) HKMG (High-k Metal Gate) low power process and power-saving design, was released with the latest high-end and high-volume smartphones from Samsung, the Galaxy S 4 (“Samsung Altius” which also used in other half of the models a quadcore Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 APQ8064T SoC, manufactured by TSMC). See also: Samsung Introduces the GALAXY S 4 – A Life Companion for a richer, simpler and fuller life [March 14, 2013].

Samsung Exynos 5 Dual [Samsung microsite, Feb 28, 2012]

World First ARM Cortex A-15 based 1.7 GHz Dual-Core Mobile Application Processor

Exynos 5 Dual is the world’s first A-15 Dual Core mobile CPU, presented by Samsung Semiconductor. Using 32nm HKMG (High-K Metal Gate) process technology, the 1.7GHz dual core Exynos 5 Dual brings unmatched performance to your leading-edge mobile devices while maintaining low power consumption

Multitask with a Power, Energy Efficient SoC

Exynos 5 Dual, using 32nm HKMG_*, is designed to meet your graphic-intensive, multi-task and power efficient requirements. It performs nearly two times faster than the existing Cortex A9-based dual core processor, with an amazing 30% lower power consumption than our previous Exynos process developed on a 45nm process. Exynos 5 Dual is well qualified to lead the high-end mobile application processor market.

*HKMG process – : High K Metal Gate Process
See more: Process Technology – 32/28nm | Samsung Semiconductor [Feb 16, 2012]

Enjoy New level of 3D gaming and reading experience

World`s highest class mobile 3D graphic processor makes games and images come alive! You will feel like you’re actually part of the game. Featuring stereoscopic 3D, Exynos 5 Dual could take you right to the middle of the cheering audience of your favorite football game. Enjoy reading? The Exynos 5 Dual supports WQXGA provides high resolution for clear readability. It’s nearly like reading an actual newspaper.

Get your Mobile devices well connected to WQXGA display!

With Exynos 5 Dual, enjoy web-surfing, e-mailing, photos and videos at the best possible resolution, WQXGA, currently available for mobile devices. Exynos 5 Dual is equipped with embedded Display Port (eDP) interface, compliant with panel self refresh (PSR) technology. The PSR function instructs the application processor not to send image data to the LCD panel when the set is displaying still image, reducing power consumption. Exynos 5 Dual provides 12.8 GB/s memory bandwidth with 2-port 800MHz LPDDR3 for heavy traffic operations. Plus, various scopes of booting interfaces, (SATA, UART, USB3.0, eMMC4.5) guarantees our end users crisp and sharp multimedia transmission.

Play 3D Stereoscopic video smoothly on your Full HD siplay without ever Encoding

Exynos 5 Dual`s powerful 8 megapixel resolution image signal processor fully supports best-in-class cameras with high resolution video recording and playback. The 1080p 60 fps multi format codec enables the highest quality FHD videos. Additionally, your device will be able to play almost any type of video format with integrated MFC (Multi Format Codec)

Samsung Announces Industry First ARM Cortex-A15 Processor Samples for Tablet Computers [Samsung Semiconductor press release, Nov 30, 2011] “The Exynos 5250 [>>> Exynos 5 Dual] is currently sampling to customers and is scheduled for mass-production in the second quarter of 2012.”
Samsung Opens New Opportunities for Mobile App Development with the Arndale Community Development Board [Samsung Semiconductor press release, Oct 26, 2012] “Arndale enables next generation of mobile applications development with the Exynos 5 Dual SoC, the world’s first production solution based on the ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore processor”

[Exynos 5 Dual] Arndale Board Video is NOW available! [Samsungsemi1 YouTube, Feb 7, 2013]

Make your mobile application faster with Exynos 5 Dual processor! Try the industry’s first ARM Cortex-A15 core based development board! Samsung Exynos 5 Dual-based community development board providing easier access to open-source codes for mobile apps. Arndale board is the ideal solution that maximizes your experience with its exceptional performance and a crystal clear display – Design superior mobile apps faster with Samsung Exynos 5 Dual – Support latest Android™OS, Jelly Bean – Allow testing with various solutions and peripherals

Enjoy the Ultimate WQXGA [2560×1600] Solution with Exynos 5 Dual [Samsung whitepaper, July 9, 2012]

…

World’s Best 3D Performance

Currently, the 3D graphics engine in mobile operating systems is used for 3D rendering and for all basic graphic work on the screen. Because the 3D graphic engine operates UI overlay, homescreen, 3D games, and more, 3D performance has become a very important feature for measuring Mobile AP’s overall performance. The 3D performance in the Exynos series has always been beyond compare; however, Exynos 5 Dual will raise the bar for mobile AP’s 3D performance even higher.

Screen resolution is directly related to 3D performance. WQXGA resolution is four times better than WXGA, meaning that mobile APs must deliver 3D performance at least two times better than the previous generation. To meet the standard of WQXGA resolution, mobile AP requires a new 3D engine and architecture.

Samsung System LSI worked closely with ARM to achieve the quad core Mali-T604, the most advanced mobile 3D engine to date. With Mali-T604, Exynos 5 Dual delivers two times better GPU performance than Exynos 4. Since Exynos 4 has more than enough 3D performance to satisfy WXGA [1280×800] resolution, Exynos 5 Dual is the only mobile AP that can handle WQXGA content with 60fps updates.

In addition, the 3D feature of Exynos 5 Dual fully supports GPGPU, including openCL v1.1 full profile.

GPGPU is a solution that distributes the CPU’s computation workload to the GPU. In GPGPU support, the floating point performance and precision of GPUs are the key factors. While CPUs can handle 64-bit floating point (double-precision), most mobile GPUs can only handle 32-bit floating point (singleprecision). Exynos 5 Dual is the first mobile AP that can run double precision floating point and full precision with outstanding 72GFlops floating point performance. With this functionality, a developer can handle more precise and heavy computation works by simultaneously using Exynos 5 Dual’s cortex-A15 dual cores and quad Mali-T604 cores performance.

…

Arndale Board Exynos 5250 ARM Cortex-A15 Mali-T604 Development Board [Charbax YouTube channel, Nov 1, 2012]

The $249 http://arndaleboard.org by InSignal is the worlds most powerful ARM based development board, providing developers with an ARM Cortex-A15 with Mali-T604 Samsung Exynos5250 development platform. It includes Android support now, Ubuntu support soon and more also later. This video includes an unboxing of the ArndaleBoard bundled with the optional $250 7″ touch-screen.

Samsung’s Exynos 5 Dual Application Processor Drives Industry’s Highest Resolution on Google’s Nexus 10 Tablet [Samsung Semiconductor press release, Nov 13, 2012]
Samsung Exynos 5 Dual Powers the New Google Chromebook [Samsung Semiconductor press release, Nov 21, 2012]

Samsung Exynos 5 Dual processor [Samsungsemi1 YouTube, Nov 2, 2012]

Samsung Exynos 5 Dual ARM® Cortex™-A15 based dual core mobile application processor The first of its kind in the industry, A15 dual-core mobile CPU has been a fantastic experience. Designed for high-end tablets, Samsung’s newest 1.7 GHz dual-core Exynos 5 Dual utilizes 32 nm High-K Metal Gate low-power process technology to drastically reduce the power consumption of your mobile devices. Get the best resolution (WQXGA) for your mobile devices with Exynos 5 Dual and enjoy web-surfing, e-mailing, photos and videos like never before.

Samsung Exynos 5 Dual Processor (ARM® Cortex™-A15 based Dual core processor) at ARM techcon [Samsungsemi1 YouTube, Nov 1, 2012]

Akshay Agrawal of Samsung Semiconductor discusses the latest end devices built with the Samsung Exynos 5 Dual Processor, such as the Samsung Chromebook and Google Nexus 10 tablet. The Exynos 5 Dual processor is built with a dual core ARM Cortex-A15, ARM Mali-T604, ARM Artisan physical IP and ARM Development Studio 5 (DS-5) toolchain.

Exynos 5 Dual [Application Processor Product Catalogue | Samsung Semiconductor, April 26, 2012]

Features

Dualcore/LPDDR2/LPDDR3/DDR3Dualchannelmemory/
WQXGA60fps3Dgraphicsupport/32nmHKMGprocess/
1080p60fpsmultiformatcodec/8Mpix30fpsEmbeddedISP

Package

SCP:1088FCFBGA/POP:1036FCFBGA

General Description

An application processor, or SoC (System on a Chip), is a microprocessor with a specialized architecture for deployment in embedded systems, such as digital still/video cameras, digital/smart TVs and set-top boxes, and automotive systems, among others. An SoC operates at frequencies from several hundred MHz to a few GHz, and is architected to deliver significant computing performances at low power consumption levels in limited board spaces. High-end SoCs often contain multiple cores, enabling them to deliver exceptional performances in applications such as digital imaging and multimedia devices.

Current-generation SoCs are capable of running full-fledged versions of modern operating systems, providing the user a rich, interactive interface on devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Almost all the latest SoCs have the ability to decode a majority of multimedia codecs, and contain hardware engines to deliver enhanced multimedia experiences to the user. They also contain dedicated MMUs (memory management units) to manage the memory for applications being run on the device. Recent SoCs also have a multitude of peripheral connectivity solutions on the chip, offering the designer extensive control in providing connectivity options on the device. SoCs are application specific, and contain features targeted towards the intended deployment segment. Thus, an SoC designed for a mobile handset would include front-end GSM RF functionalities on-chip, which would be absent in an SoC designed for deployment in a digital still camera. An increasing number of SoCs, however, are now offering a wide range of features, making the processor suitable for deployment on any application. Samsung is a worldwide leader in providing the most advanced, efficient, and customizable SoC solutions for deployment on a wide range of platforms, such as digital imaging, multimedia, and mobile communication and computing. Samsung’s line of SoCs offers the highest performance, thermal stability, reliability, and I/O density in the smallest form factors at the lowest power consumption levels. Worldwide, Samsung is the preferred provider for SoC solutions for a majority of developers and OEMs for deployment on the broadest computing and communication devices and platforms.

Detail Features

CortexA15 dual core subsystem with 64-/128-bit SIMD NEON
32KB (Instruction)/32KB (Data) L1 Cache and 1MB L2 Cache
128-bit Multi-layered bus architecture
Internal ROM and RAM for secure booting, security, and general purposes
Memory Subsystem
– 2-ports 32-bit 800MHz LPDDR3/DDR3 Interfaces
– 2-ports 32-bit 533MHz LPDDR2 Interfaces
8-bit ITU 601 Camera Interface
Multi-format Video Hardware Codec: 1080p 60fps (capable of decoding and encoding MPEG-4/H.263/H.264 and decoding only MPEG-2/VC1/VP8)
3D and 2D graphics hardware, supporting OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/Halti, OpenVG 1.1 and OpenCL 1.1 full profile
Image Signal Processor : supporting BayerRGB up to 14bit input with 14.6MP 15fps, 8MP 30fps through MIPI CSI2 & YUV 8bit interfaces and special functionalities such as 3-dimensional noise reduction (3DNR), video digital image stabilization (VDIS) and optical distortion compensation (ODC)
JPEG Hardware Codec
LCD single display, supporting max WQXGA, 24bpp RGB, YUV formats through MIPI DSI or eDP
Simultaneously display of WQXGA single LCD display and 1080p HDMI
HDMI 1.4 interfaces with on-chip PHY
2-ports (4-lanes) MIPI CSI2 interfaces
1-port (4-lanes) eDisplayPort (eDP)
1-channel USB 3.0 Device or Host, supporting SS (5Gbps) with on-chip PHY
1-channel USB 2.0 Host or Device, supporting LS/FS/HS (1.5Mbps/12Mbps/480Mbps) with on-chip PHY

2-channel USB HSIC, supporting 480Mbps with on-chip PHY
1-channel HS-MMC 4.5
1-channel SDIO 3.0
2-channel SD 2.0 or HS-MMC4.41
4-channel high-speed UART (up to 3Mbps data rate for Bluetooth 2.1 EDR and IrDA 1.0 SIR)
3-channel SPI
1-channel AC-97, 2-channel PCM, and 3-channel 24-bit I2S audio interface, supporting 5.1 channel audio
1-channel S/PDIF interface support for digital audio
4-channel I2C interface support (up to 400kbps) for PMIC, HDMI, and general-purpose multi-master
4-channel HS-I2C (up to 3.1 Mbps)
Samsung Reconfiguration Processor supports low power audio play
MIPI-HSI v1.1, supporting 200Mbps full-duplex
C2C, supporting through path between DRAM and MODEM
Security subsystem supporting hardware crypto accelerators, ARM TrustZone and TZASC
32-channel DMA Controller
Configurable GPIOs
Real time clock, PLLs, timer with PWM, multi-core timer, and watchdog timer

CLBenchmark – High-performance compute benchmark for OpenCL 1.1 environment [CLBenchmark.com, Oct 16, 2012]

Desktop 1.1

The first professional OpenCL benchmark for desktop OSes

CLBenchmark 1.1 Desktop Edition is an easy-to-use tool for comparing the computational performance of different platforms. It offers an unbiased way of testing and comparing the performance of implementations of OpenCL 1.1, a royalty-free standard for heterogeneous parallel programming maintained by Khronos Group. CLBenchmark compares the strengths and weaknesses of different hardware architectures such as CPUs, GPUs and APUs. The test results are listed in a transparent and public OpenCL performance database.

Features:

Physics: SPH Fluid Simulation

Physics simulation has a great history in computer science, as it’s original goal was to help scientists and engineers in their design efforts. With increased computing capacity, physics got into reach of virtual world simulations, for example games. Enabling physics simulation can uplift in-game interactions into a new dimension.

In our SPH Fluid simulation, we’ve created a particle based simulation consisting of 32k particles. The results of the simulation is displayed on a surface calculated by a Marching Cubes implementation. This technique is widely adopted among games, for simulating the movement of fluids, and even smoke, or other gases.

Graphics: Raytrace

Raytracing is an image synthesis technique used in wide variety of applications such as simulation-visualization, design, and special effects in movie making. This technique is also getting more attention as it is going to be available in real-time rendering, especially for games, which will enable developers to implement life-like lighting and shading models in their titles.

Our ray trace test implements the traditional recursive ray trace algorithm and supports reflections and soft shadows and also uses global illumination rays to replace the ambient term. The renderer uses kd-tree acceleration structure with the kd-restart traversal technique. The scene consists of 600k triangles and is rendered at 2048×1024 resolution.

The problem domain is divided into a grid of tiles (or frustums) that are processed separately – this saves memory. In addition, multiple devices can process different tiles at the same time, so this test can stress even multi-GPU systems. Most of the calculations are happening in the ray traversal kernel, which tries to find the nearest triangle that intersects the ray.

Optical flow: Feature Matching

With this application we calculate the motion of the depicted object on a series of input images. For each image we calculate a vectorfield, which associates a motion vector to every pixel. These motion vectors are represented in colorspace. The color map used for this can be seen in the bottom left corner of the calculated vector field image.

In computer vision, we can consider anything as a feature which has a high vertical and horizontal gradient and thus easily recognizable. A good feature can be robustly detected over a sequence of images. By matching these features over these image sequences, we can track the movement of objects.

We implemented the Moravec interest operator for our application, because it is easily parallelizable and can be easily and effectively implemented for the OpenCL platform. We developed a block-based matching strategy for tracking features. We applied the results of feature matching in a sample application in which we aim to calculate the velocity for each pixel. For this, we use a patch-based approach, calculating the sum of square differences for the neighborhood of the features.

The algorithm works on pairs of images. The first step is feature detection and matching. Each pair of features defines a motion vector. This rare field of motion vector are then revised heuristically, to remove false matchings. The dense vector field is constructed from this revised field.

Feature detection and the dense vector field calculation heavily utilize the image IO of the device. The device should also handle an increased number of kernel launches during this application.

Image Filter

From UI visualizations to graphics content creation and photography, image filters are extensively applied. As the most frequently used image filters are suites of convolution filters, we have included the most important types in CLBenchmark. In order to thoroughly examine the capabilities of the underlying hardware architectures, we have developed multiple implementations for a single filter.

Gauss Filter A Gauss filter is widely used for “smoothing” effects and, as it is a low-pass filter in frequency domain, it is also useful as a pre-pass of image resizing (down-sampling).

Sobel Filter A Sobel filter has edge detecting property so it takes part in anti-aliasing filters and a variety of object recognition algorithms.

Median Filter Despite the Median filter is not a convolution filter, it is widely accepted in the area of noise reduction, particularly applicable against salt and pepper noise.

Programming Principles

As a priority, we are trying to provide relevant real-world applications for benchmarking purposes. However, even a well selected set of use cases cannot match every possible workload, so we have added synthetic tests also. These are included in the Programming Principles group, containing multiple implementations of general problems which real-world parallel problems could be composited into.

Scanning Inclusive prefix sum calculation. It’s the base operation of dynamic data generation and various sorting algorithms like radix sort. Multiple implementations included, such as Parallel (logarithmic) Scan on Local memory chunks and a mostly sequential case.

Bucketing Making 5 homogeneous, compacted streams of a single heterogeneous array. Only Parallel Scan based version made.

Reduction Many-to-one kind of operators like “sum of an array” are used in reductions. We’ve found addition ideal, as the operator’s computation cost is the lowest possible, and we can focus on the algorithm itself. A more specific sum also included, implemented to measure atomic addition on both global and local memory addresses.

Bitonic Merge Sort Sorting algorithms are used in a wide variety of applications for example data structures, databases, computer graphics. Bitonic merge sort is parallel sorting algorithm, first ordering sub sequences in local memory, then merging the result in global memory.

Tree-search Parallel search for multiple elements on an unbalanced tree using depth first strategy. It’s ideal to stress the device’s resistance to branch-divergency.

Availability

Community Edition:

CLBenchmark 1.1 Desktop Edition is available for community use and can be downloaded free of charge. This edition requires network connection and collects information about your OpenCL devices. This method let us supply you with proper, device specific OpenCL binaries and enables CLBenchmark to fully utilize your device and helps to achieve its peak performance.

For more information about downloading CLBenchmark 1.1. Desktop Communitiy Edition, please click here.

Corporate Edition:

CLBenchmark 1.1 Desktop Edition is also accessible for licensing, which is aimed at industry-leading technology companies for testing and optimizing their OpenCL implementations and thus bringing stable and efficient solutions to the market. Click here for more details or send us a message at sales@clbenchmark.com! Windows, OS X and generic Linux.

Media Edition:

For journalists, CLBenchmark 1.1 Desktop Edition is available in a special Media Edition. For more information, email us at pr@kishontiinformatics.com!

With 28nm non-exclusive in 2013 TSMC tested first tape-out of an ARM Cortex™-A57 processor on 16nm FinFET process technology

April 3, 2013 5:11 pm / 4 Comments on With 28nm non-exclusive in 2013 TSMC tested first tape-out of an ARM Cortex™-A57 processor on 16nm FinFET process technology

Cortex-A57?

– 3x performance of 2012 superphones
– 64-bit support for future consumer apps + current and future enterprise apps
– Scalable beyond 16 cores

…

First Cortex-A50 series chips available from 2014

Update: TSMC 16nm FinFET to enter mass production within one year after 20nm ramp-up, says Chang [DIGITIMES, April 18, 2013]

TSMC’s 16nm FinFET process will enter mass production in less than one year after ramping up production of 20nm chips, company chairman and CEO Morris Chang said at an investors meeting today (April 18).

Chang indicated that TSMC already moved its 20nm process to risk production in the first quarter of 2013. As for 16nm FinFET, the node will be ready for risk production by the year-end, Chang said.

While stepping up efforts to bring newer nodes online, TSMC has revised upward its 2013 capex to US$9.5-10 billion. The foundry previously set capex for the year at US$9 billion.

In addition, Chang reiterated his previous remark that production of TSMC’s 28nm wafers and revenues generated from the process in 2013 will triple those of 2012. The node technology will continue to play the major driver of TSMC’s revenue growth in 2013, said Chang, adding that the foundry’s share of the 28nm foundry market will remain high this year.

Nandan Nayampally highlights the ARM® Cortex™-A57 processor [ARMflix YouTube channel, Oct 30, 2012]

Nandan Nayampally highlights the ARM® Cortex™-A57 processor, ARM’s highest performing processor, designed to further extend the capabilities of future mobile and enterprise computing applications including compute intensive 64-bit applications such as high end computer, tablet and server products.

Introductory information: ARM information page [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Feb 5, 2013]

TSMC?

TSMC reports big Q4 net profit jump [Formosa EnglishNews YouTube channel, Jan 18, 2013]

TSMC held its quarterly investor conference today, and the news was all good. The world’s biggest contract chip maker reported a huge rise in fourth quarter profit because of the boom in mobile devices, and it expects sales growth of 15-20 percent in 2013. TSMC Chairman Morris Chang had reason to be happy. Profits in the fourth quarter of 2012 not only rose 32 percent, but the company set highs for consolidated sales and income for the year as whole. And Chang was optimistic about this year. Morris Chang TSMC Chairman We estimate that global economic growth will be 2.6 percent in 2013, which is higher than the growth rate last year.Chang also predicted that Taiwan’s chip makers would see sales grow 7 percent this year. The company’s chief financial officer Lora Ho said strong demand for chip

Morris Chang with Jen-Hsun Huang [ComputerHistory YouTube channel, Nov 15, 2007]

Important note: The video was recorded in 2007, so an important addition has to be given in a preceding note from Morris Chang Wikipedia article:

… In 2005, he handed TSMC’s CEO position to Rick Tsai.

As of June 2009, Chang has returned to the position of TSMC‘s CEO once again [because things were not going well]. …

[Recorded Oct 17, 2007] A rare and fascinating conversation with one of the most innovative semiconductor pioneers and esteemed business leaders of our time. Born in Ningbo (Zhejiang province), China, in 1931, Dr. Morris Chang is the founding chairman of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd. (TSMC), a revolutionary enterprise he founded in 1987. TSMC is a dedicated silicon foundry, an independent factory available to anyone for producing integrated circuits. Using this approach, both entrepreneurs and established semiconductor companies could avoid having to build their own semiconductor factories and focus instead on circuit features and system-level product design as the source of value. From 1958 to 1983, Chang worked at Texas Instruments (TI), rising to group vice president for its worldwide semiconductor business. Under Chang’s leadership, TI emerged as the world’s leading producer of integrated circuits. During his tenure the company also pioneered high-volume production of consumer products including calculators, digital watches, and the popular “Speak & Spell” electronic toy. In 1983, Chang left TI to become president and chief operating officer at General Instrument Corporation. After a year at General Instrument, Chang was recruited by the Taiwanese government to spearhead that country’s industrial research organization, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI). While there, he focused on issues relating to using technology to advance Taiwan’s larger social and economic goals. It was in this capacity that Chang founded TSMC. In 1998, Chang was named by Business Week magazine as one of the Top 25 Managers of the Year and one of the Stars of Asia. In 2000, he received the IEEE Robert N. Noyce Award for exceptional contributions to the microelectronics industry. In 2005, he won the Nikkei Asia Prize for Regional Growth. On October 16, 2007, Chang will be inducted as a Fellow of the Computer History Museum. Chang is a Life Member Emeritus of MIT Corporation, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and serves on the advisory boards of the New York Stock Exchange, Stanford University, and the University of California at Berkeley. Chang holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from M.I.T. (1952, 1953), and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University (1964). He also holds honorary doctorates from seven universities. This talk was with Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder, president and CEO of NVIDIA Corporation.

The essence of TSMC’s contract chip manufacturing operation, as it stands now, can be summarized by this diagram (more information around that is in the excepts included towards the end of this post from TSMC’s Annual Report released on April 2, 2013):

And here is another essential introductory information about TSMC:
TSMC OIP [Open Innovation Platform] 2012 – Sit down with Suk Lee, TSMC [chipestimate YouTube channel, Oct 26, 2012]

Sean O’Kane, Producer/Host ChipEstimate.TV interviews at TSMC OIP [Open Innovation Platform] 2012 Suk Lee, Sr. Director, Design Infrastructure Marketing Division, TSMC

Investing in FinFET Technology Leadership Presented by ARM [ARMflix YouTube channel, Nov 12, 2012]

As the industry heads down the advanced technology curve, there’s a lot of interest around the benefits of FinFET technology over existing planar CMOS transistors. In this video, Dr. Rob Aitken, R&D Fellow at ARM, discusses the need for new transistor technologies and how FinFET may be a solution.

Background information:
– The future of the semiconductor IP ecosystem [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Dec 13, 2012]
– ARM information page [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Feb 5, 2013]

Next-generation Solutions: One Size does not Fit All by Nandan Nayampally, Director of Apps Processor Products, Processor Division, ARM [ARMflix YouTube channel, Jan 3, 2013]

Nandan Nayampally, Director of Apps Processor Products, Processor Division of ARM gives keynote at ARM Hsinchu Technical Symposium 2012. Presentation title: Next-generation Solutions: One Size does not Fit ALL

ARM TechCon 2012 – Simon Segars Keynote launching the Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57 processors [ARMflix YouTube channel, Oct 30, 2012]

Background information:
– ARM information page [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Feb 5, 2013]
– Cortex-A57 Processor [ARM microsite, Oct 30, 2012]
– ARM Cortex-A57 – So Big is Relative but How Relative is Your Big? [SoC Design blog of ARM, Oct 30, 2012]
– ARM TechCon 2012 Day 1 – Cortex-A50 Launch, Panel Discussion and Busy Sessions [ARM Events blog, Oct 31, 2012]
– big.LITTLE in 64-bit [SoC Design blog of ARM, Nov 1, 2012]
– Cortex-A57 – Connected Community – ARM [ARM community page, Nov 12, 2012]

Finally here is the press release describing the news summarized by me in the headline of this post as “With 28nm non-exclusive in 2013 TSMC tested first tape-out of an ARM Cortex™-A57 processor on 16nm FinFET process technology”:

ARM and TSMC Tape Out First ARM Cortex-A57 Processor [joint press release, April 2, 2013]

Hsinchu, Taiwan and Cambridge, UK – April 2, 2013 – ARM and TSMC (TWSE: 2330, NYSE: TSM) today announced the first tape-out of an ARM® Cortex™-A57 processor on FinFET process technology. The Cortex-A57 processor is ARM’s highest performing processor, designed to further extend the capabilities of future mobile and enterprise computing, including compute intensive applications such as high-end computer, tablet and server products. This is the first milestone in the collaboration between ARM and TSMC to jointly optimize the 64-bit ARMv8 processor series on TSMC FinFET process technologies. The two companies cooperated in the implementation from RTL to tape-out in six months using ARM Artisan® physical IP, TSMC memory macros, and EDA technologies enabled by TSMC’s Open Innovation Platform® (OIP) design ecosystem.

ARM and TSMC’s collaboration produces optimized, power-efficient Cortex-A57 processors and libraries to support early customer implementations on 16nm FinFET for high-performance, ARM technology-based SoCs.

“This first ARM Cortex-A57 processor implementation paves the way for our mutual customers to leverage the performance and power efficiency of 16nm FinFET technology,” said Tom Cronk, executive vice president and general manager, Processor Division, ARM. “The joint effort of ARM, TSMC, and TSMC’s OIP design ecosystem partners demonstrates the strong commitment to provide industry-leading technology for customer designs to benefit from our latest 64-bit ARMv8 architecture, big.LITTLE™ processing and ARM POP™ IP across a wide variety of market segments.”

“Our multi-year, multi-node collaboration with ARM continues to deliver advanced technologies to enable market-leading SoCs across mobile, server, and enterprise infrastructure applications,” said Dr. Cliff Hou, TSMC Vice President of R&D. “This achievement demonstrates that the next-generation ARMv8 processor is FinFET-ready for TSMC’s advanced technology.”

This announcement highlights the enhanced and intensified collaboration between ARM and TSMC. The test chip was implemented using a commercially available 16nm FinFET tool chain and design services provided by the OIP ecosystem and ARM Connected Community partners. This successful collaborative milestone is confirmation of the roles that TSMC’s OIP and ARM’s Connected Community play in promoting innovation for the semiconductor design industry.

About ARM

ARM designs the technology that lies at the heart of advanced digital products, from wireless, networking and consumer entertainment solutions to imaging, automotive, security and storage devices. ARM’s comprehensive product offering includes RISC microprocessors, graphics processors, video engines, enabling software, cell libraries, embedded memories, high-speed connectivity products, peripherals and development tools. Combined with comprehensive design services, training, support and maintenance, and the company’s broad Partner community, they provide a total system solution that offers a fast, reliable path to market for leading electronics companies. Find out more about ARM by following these links:

• ARM website: http://www.arm.com/

• ARM Connected Community: http://www.arm.com/community/

• ARM Blogs: http://blogs.arm.com/

• ARMFlix on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/ARMflix

ARM on Twitter:

• http://twitter.com/ARMMobile

• http://twitter.com/ARMCommunity

• http://twitter.com/ARMEmbedded

• http://twitter.com/ARMLowPwr

• http://twitter.com/KeilTools

• http://twitter.com/ARMMultimedia

About TSMC

TSMC is the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, providing the industry’s leading process technology and the foundry’s largest portfolio of process-proven libraries, IPs, design tools and reference flows. The Company’s managed capacity in 2012 totaled 15.1 million (8-inch equivalent) wafers, including capacity from three advanced 12-inch GIGAFAB™ facilities, four eight-inch fabs, one six-inch fab, as well as TSMC’s wholly owned subsidiaries, WaferTech and TSMC China, and its joint venture fab, SSMC. TSMC is the first foundry to provide 28nm production capabilities. TSMC’s corporate headquarters are in Hsinchu, Taiwan. For more information about TSMC please visit http://www.tsmc.com.

# # #

Form 20-F Filings with U.S. SEC (4/2/2013) for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC 台積公司) [TSMC, April 2, 2013]

ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934
For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2012

…

… Over the years, our customer profile and the nature of our customers’ business have changed dramatically. While we generate revenue from hundreds of customers worldwide, our ten largest customers accounted for approximately 54%, 56% and 59% of our net sales in 2010, 2011 and 2012, respectively. Our largest customer accounted for 9%, 14% and 17% of our net sales in 2010, 2011 and 2012, respectively. …

… We believe we are currently the world’s largest dedicated foundry in the semiconductor industry. We were founded in 1987 as a joint venture among the R.O.C. government and other private investors and were incorporated in the R.O.C. on February 21, 1987. …

…

As a foundry, we manufacture semiconductors using our manufacturing processes for our customers based on their own or third parties’ proprietary integrated circuit designs. We offer a comprehensive range of wafer fabrication processes, including processes to manufacture CMOS logic, mixed-signal, radio frequency, embedded memory, BiCMOS mixed-signal and other semiconductors. We estimate that our revenue market segment share among total foundries worldwide was 45% in 2012. We also offer design, mask making, bumping, probing, assembly and testing services.

We believe that our large capacity, particularly for advanced technologies, is a major competitive advantage. Please see “— Manufacturing Capacity and Technology” and “— Capacity Management and Technology Upgrade Plans” for a further discussion of ourcapacity.

We count among our customers many of the world’s leading semiconductor companies, ranging from fabless semiconductor and system companies such as Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Altera Corporation, Broadcom Corporation, Marvell Semiconductor Inc., MediaTek Inc., NVIDIA Corporation, OmniVision Technologies and Qualcomm Incorporated, to integrated device manufacturers such as LSI Corporation, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments Inc. Fabless semiconductor and system companies accounted for approximately 85%, and integrated device manufacturers accounted for approximately 15% of our net sales in 2012.

…

We manufacture semiconductors on silicon wafers based on proprietary circuitry designs provided by our customers or third party designers. Two key factors that characterize a foundry’s manufacturing capabilities are output capacity and fabrication process technologies. Since our establishment, we have possessed the largest capacity among the world’s dedicated foundries. We also believe that we are the technology leader among the dedicated foundries in terms of our net sales of advanced semiconductors with a resolution of 65-nanometer and below, and are one of the leaders in the semiconductor manufacturing industry generally. We are the first semiconductor foundry with proven low-k interconnect technology in commercial production from the 0.13 micron node down to 28-nanometer node. Following our commercial production based on 65-nanometer process technology in 2006, we also unveiled 55-nanometer process technology in 2007. Our 65-nanometer and 55-nanometer technologies are the third-generation proprietary processes that employ low-k dielectrics. In 2008, we also qualified our 45-nanometer and 40-nanometer process technologies with ultra low-k dielectrics and advanced immersion lithography. In the fourth quarter of 2011, we have begun volume production of 28-nanometer products with first-generation high-k/metal gate transistor. In 2012, we continued 20-nanometer technology development to provide migration path from 28-nanometer for both performance driven products and mobile computing applications.

…

Our capital expenditures in 2010, 2011 and 2012 were NT$186,944 million, NT$213,963 million and NT$246,137 million (US$8,322 million, translated from a weighted average exchange rate of NT$29.577 to US$1.00), respectively. Our capital expenditures in 2013 are expected to be approximately US$9 billion, which, depending on market conditions, may be adjusted later. Prior to 2012, our capital expenditures were funded by our operating cash flow. Starting 2012, our capital expenditures were partially funded by the issuance of corporate bonds. The capital expenditures for 2013 are also expected to be funded in similar ways as in 2012. In 2013, we anticipate our capital expenditures to focus primarily on the following:

adding production capacity to our 300mm wafer fabs;

developing new process technologies in 20-nanometer, and 16-nanometer nodes;
expanding buildings/facilities for Fab 12, Fab 14 and Fab 15;
other research and development projects;
capacity expansion for mask and backend operations; and
solar and solid state lighting businesses.

…

… We plan to continue to invest significant amounts on research and development in 2013, with the goal of maintaining a leading position in the development of advanced process technologies. Our research and development efforts have allowed us to provide our customers access to certain advanced process technologies, such as 65-nanometer, 55-nanometer, 45-nanometer, 40-nanometer and 28-nanometer technology for volume production, prior to the implementation of those advanced process technologies by many integrated device manufacturers and our competitors. In addition, we expect to advance our process technologies further down to 20/16-nanometer and below in the coming years to maintain our technology leadership. We will also continue to invest in research and development for our mainstream technologies offerings to provide function-rich process capabilities to our customers.

…

We manufacture a variety of semiconductors based on designs provided by our customers. Our business model is commonly called a “dedicated semiconductor foundry.” The foundry segment of the semiconductor industry as a whole experienced rapid growth over the last 26 years since our inception. As the leader of the foundry segment of the semiconductor industry, our net sales and net income were NT$419,538 million and NT$161,605 million in 2010, NT$427,081 million and NT$134,201 million in 2011, and NT$506,249 million (US$17,427 million) and NT$166,159 million (US$5,720 million) in 2012, respectively. The sales in 2011 increased slightly by 1.8% from 2010, mainly due to growth in customer demand and more favorable product mix, partially offset by the effect of U.S. dollar depreciation. Our sales in 2012 increased by 18.5% from 2011, mainly due to continuous growth in customer demand and increase in sales of our 28-nanometer products, which commanded a higher selling price.

…

Technology Migration.

Our operations utilize a variety of process technologies, ranging from mainstream process technologies of 0.5 micron or above circuit resolutions to advanced process technologies of 28-nanometer circuit resolutions. The table below presents a breakdown of wafer sales by circuit resolution during the last three years:

Percentage of total wafer revenue ⁽¹⁾ for the year ended December 31

Resolution

2010

2011

2012

28-nanometer

–

1%

12%

40/45-nanometer

17%

26%

27%

65-nanometer

29%

29%

23%

90-nanometer

14%

9%

9%

0.11/0.13 micron

12%

8%

6%

0.15 micron

4%

6%

4%

0.18 micron

13%

12%

11%

0.25 micron

4%

4%

4%

0.35 micron

4%

3%

2%

≥0.5 micron

3%

2%

2%

Total

100%

100%

100%

⁽¹⁾ Percentages represent wafer revenue by technology as a percentage of total revenue from wafer sales, which exclude revenue associated with design, mask making, probing, and testing and assembly services. Total wafer revenue excludes sales returns and allowances.

…

Our gross margin fluctuates with the level of capacity utilization, price change and product mix, among other factors. In 2012, our gross margin increased to 48.1% of net sales from 45.4% of net sales in 2011. The higher margin in 2012 was primarily due to higher capacity utilization and cost reductions, which contributed favorably to our gross margin by 5.5 and 2.8 percentage points, respectively, partially offset by price decline and higher portion of wafer sales in 28-nanometer technology bearing lower than corporate average margins at initial production stage, which negatively impacted our gross margin by 5.3 percentage points.

…

… Research and development expenditures increased by NT$6,572 million in 2012, or 19.4%, from 2011, mainly due to a higher level of research activities for 20-nanometer technologies and higher employee profit sharing expenses and bonus. In 2011, research and development expenditures increased by NT$4,123 million, or 13.9%, from 2010, mainly due to higher spending in developing 20-nanometer technology, partially offset by lower employee profit sharing expenses and bonus. We plan to continue to invest significant amounts in research and development in 2013.

…

Capital expenditures in 2012 were primarily related to:

adding production capacity to 300mm wafer fabs;
developing process technologies including 20-nanometer node and below;
expanding buildings/facilities for Fab 12, Fab 14 and Fab 15;
other research and development projects;
capacity expansion for mask and backend operations; and
solar and solid state lighting businesses

…

Employees

The following table sets out, as of the dates indicated, the number of our full-time employees serving in the capacities indicated.

As of December 31

Function

2010

2011⁽¹⁾

2012⁽¹⁾

Managers

3,142

3,601

3,865

Professionals

12,729

13,665

15,844

Assistant Engineers/Clericals

2,650

2,796

3,079

Technicians

14,711

15,395

16,479

Total

33,232

35,457

39,267

The following table sets out, as of the dates indicated, a breakdown of the number of our full-time employees by geographic location:

Location of Facility and Principal Offices as of December 31

2010

2011⁽¹⁾

2012⁽¹⁾

Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan

20,703

20,107

21,534

Southern Taiwan Science Park, Taiwan

9,158

9,041

8,964

Central Taiwan Science Park, Taiwan

29

1,410

3,558

Taoyuan County, Taiwan

–

1,333

1,378

China

1,903

2,134

2,353

North America

1,355

1,343

1,395

Europe

48

53

50

Japan

32

32

32

Korea

4

4

3

Total

33,232

35,457

39,267

⁽¹⁾ Including employees of our non-wholly owned subsidiaries, Xintec Inc. and Mutual-Pak Technology Co., Ltd., since 2011.

As of December 31, 2012, our total employee population was 39,267 with an educational makeup of 3.6% Ph.Ds, 34.4% masters, 25.9% university bachelors, 12.8% college degrees and 23.3% others. Among this employee population, 50.2% were at a managerial or professional level. …

…

Major Shareholders

The following table sets forth certain information as of February 28, 2013, with respect to our common shares owned by (i) each person who, according to our records, beneficially owned five percent or more of our common shares and by (ii) all directors and executive officers as a group.

Names of Shareholders

Number of Common Shares Owned

Percentage of Total Outstanding Common Shares

National Development Fund

1,653,709,980

6.38%

Capital World Investors

1,488,857,477

5.74%

Directors and executive officers as a group

291,940,745

1.13%

Windows RT Buzz: only the naming will disappear?

March 28, 2013 9:10 am / 1 Comment on Windows RT Buzz: only the naming will disappear?

Microsoft defends Windows RT as necessary disruption [CNET, March 21, 2013]
vs.
Microsoft to merge Windows RT into next-generation Windows OS [DIGITIMES, March 27, 2013]

These headlines tell everything. And don’t forget, end of March is the end of PRISM when all top level decisions for the next fiscal year have already been taken. Now put these two media reports against each other:

[Michael] Angiulo [corporate vice president, Windows Planning, Hardware & PC Ecosystem] says Microsoft has good reason to stick with the platform.

“It was a ton of work for us and we didn’t do the work and endure the disruption for any reason other than the fact that there’s a strategy there that just gets stronger over time.

Looking at things now like power performance and standby time and passive [fanless] form factors. When we launched Windows 8, it was really competitive with a full-sized iPad. A lot of that was made possible by the ARM [chip] architecture.

If you look forward a year or two and you look at the performance output of ARM chips, those are some really capable chips. I think it has a very bright future.

People are talking about legacy desktop software not running, but they don’t think about the customer benefit of only running modern apps. The only apps that you install from the Windows store are the kind, that as a customer, you can manage your rights to.

Let’s say you drop that PC in a pool. Well, you get a new one and then you just redownload [the apps]. That’s the kind of model people are used to with a phone or tablet today. I can maintain all the apps in the [Microsoft] store and reset with a single switch.

So, on Windows RT, the user experience stays consistent over time. That’s a big benefit. And as the number of apps grow in the store, that value promise only gets stronger.

And on the ARM side, there is a propensity for a much higher percentage of PCs that are going to ship with mobile broadband [3G/4G], precisely because ARM PCs have even longer battery life [than Intel PCs] on connected standby [when a device is in standby mode but still connected to e-mail, social networking sites, and the Internet in general].”

Microsoft will no longer launch products under its Windows RT line and will instead merge the product line into the software giant’s next-generation Windows, codenamed Blue, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

Although the PC supply chain had pushed the Windows on ARM (WoA) platform aggressively, the Windows RT’s name, which has misled most consumers into believing that the operating system is able to support all existing x86 Windows programs, the lack of apps, as well as compatibility issues have all significantly damaged demand.

The next-generation of Windows is expected to make its first appearance at the Microsoft Build Developer Conference 2013, hosted from June 26-28 in San Francisco, the US.

The sources believe that Wintel PC demand is likely to drop significantly before Intel and Microsoft’s next-generation products show up in the second half of the year.

With that the strategy to stick to Windows RT as a product, but not as a name, is crystall clear. Nevertheless between these two news dates we have other news articles in the world which are casting doubts on the future of Windows RT as a product.

Look at the bulk of news headlines between March 21 and March 28 to see the kind of mixed reporting. As these headlines coming from the proper Google search:

Is Microsoft merging Windows RT into Windows 8 for “Blue” update?
Microsoft Surface Pro, RT, Windows 8 Phones Battle For Confused Customers: Who Wins?
Microsoft: Windows RT Not Going Anywhere
Intel vs. Microsoft: how Atom processors could kill Windows RT [The Verge, March 21, 2013]
Microsoft defends Windows RT. Did it do more harm than good? [Computerworld, March 22, 2013]
Microsoft defends Windows RT but dodges responding to key criticism [BGR, March 22, 2013]
Microsoft Exec Promises Windows RT Will Get Better ‘Over Time’ [Business Insider, March 22, 2013]
Windows RT to also receive Windows Blue, Surface RT users can now rejoice
Should Microsoft Give Up on Windows RT?
Microsoft exec: Look at the bright side of Windows RT
Microsoft Says Windows RT Is the Future, But Can it Survive the Present? [CIO, March 22, 2013]
Microsoft Exec Sings High Praise for ARM and Windows RT, Downplays Legacy App Support
Microsoft Still Doesn’t Get It [Seeking Alpha, March 23, 2013]
Microsoft: Windows RT will get better over time, just you wait
Microsoft Stands Strong Behind Windows RT
This Week in Tablets: Does Windows Blue spell the end for RT?
Do we need another Windows OS? [CNET, March 23, 2013]
Surface RT, Windows RT Dead? Microsoft Defends It Against OS Attacks

The endgame for ST-Ericsson, other SoC vendors like Allwinner to benefit tremendously from Ericsson’s advanced thin modems

March 24, 2013 7:58 pm / 1 Comment on The endgame for ST-Ericsson, other SoC vendors like Allwinner to benefit tremendously from Ericsson’s advanced thin modems

As ST-Ericsson: Fundamental repositioning for modem, APE and ModAps spaces [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Oct 8, 2012] was considered impossible after STMicroelectronics and Texas Intruments are exiting the mobile market as there is no chance to compete with aggressive SoC vendors from PRC and the market #2 MediaTek from Taiwan [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Dec 12, 2012] now we have the endgame of ST-Ericsson as decided by its parent companies.

Note that modemless SoC vendors like Allwinner, Rockchip etc. will tremedously benefit from this type of endgame, as Ericsson will become a modem-only SoC vendor with the so called thin modem business taken over. This part of ST-Ericsson is dealing with the highly strategic and competitive LTE multimode thin modems (including 2G, 3G and 4G multimode), i.e. the well proven in last year trials Thor M7400 SoC solution (to come in devices of H2 2013), and its enhanced (with Single RF Chip Carrier Aggregation and ability to achieve 150Mbps) mass market follow-up, the Thor M7450 SoC solution (designed in 28nm, now sampling and to come in devices of 2014) based on the revolutionary architecture introduced in Thor M7400 which enables market-leading power consumption. All the so called legacy modems (as well as the remaining parts of the ST-Ericsson business) will be taken over by STMicroelectronics, but no further development will be done for them (and only selective development for the remaining parts of the ST-Ericsson business).

Financial responsibility for the respective businesses was taken over by the two parent companies from March 1st, 2013. The break up will be completed in Q3 2013. While Ericsson and STMicroelectronics will take over around 1800 and 950 people (employees and contractors) respectively. Of the remaining workforce approx. 1600 will be be made redundant in the process. For the remaining 200 employees and contractors in the so called connectivity business the future will be decided by the outcome of selling that business.

Here are

the details,

and then

a collection of related press releases

Details

STMicroelectronics, Ericsson End Venture After Failed Sale [Bloomberg, March 18, 2013]

“In 2009 the situation was different, we started with a great base of European customers,” STMicroelectronics Chief Executive Officer Carlo Bozotti said on a conference call. “Unfortunately this customer base has changed.”

…

Potential buyers that were approached, including customer Samsung Electronics Co., declined to make an offer, people familiar with the matter said last week. Samsung is “a great customer for us and we continue to work for a lot of products with this company,” Bozotti said today, declining to comment on any talks for Samsung taking over the venture.

STMicro, Ericsson split mobile chip unit, 1,600 jobs go [Reuters, March 18, 2013]

“All possible scenarios were considered but the option announced today was always a real possibility,” STMicro chief executive Carlo Bozotti told a conference call on Monday.

ST takes on mobile chips…but not the market [EETimes, March 18, 2013]

In a conference call Monday morning (March 18) Carlo Bozotti, CEO of ST (Geneva, Switzerland) promised continued support for ST-Ericsson’s existing products and customers but also indicated that ST would not be trying to replicate ST-Ericsson’s platform-level engagement with the mobile devices market. This approach puts a question-mark over the future relevance of ST’s fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) manufacturing process, a proprietary technology that is out of the mainstream of global CMOS manufacturing, but which has reportedly shown technical advantages for mobile applications where power consumption and battery life are key parameters.

…

“ST will not continue the so-called ModAp – ModAp is the integration of the application processor and the modem in one chip – in terms of new development,” said Bozotti during the conference call. “Of course, we will go on as long as needed with the existing products to support our customers. So we have not called – and we will not call – for any end of life.”

Moving on to stand-alone application processors, Bozotti said: “Of course our focus area is the digital consumer, is automotive. In the case of portable equipment we will not offer a complete platform for the market. However, we may develop dedicated solutions using our FD-SOI technologies for high volume requirements in the area of portable equipment.”

…

With regard to the decision to exit the joint venture Bozotti said: “This is extremely intense R&D. The dynamic of the wireless market is with increasing polarization in terms of key customers in this market. And also we are seeing an increasing trend of vertical integration of their activities including the design and manufacture of semiconductor chips,” Bozotti said.

Ericsson’s Management Hosts Strategic Way Forward For ST-Ericsson Conference (Transcript) [Seeking Alpha, March 18, 2013]

In April of 2012, last year, ST-Ericsson announced its strategic plan. And in October of 2012, Ericsson and ST together announced that we are, as parents, conducting a strategic review of the business plan and the future ownership structure of the joint venture. In — on December 10 of the last year, 2012, ST then makes an announcement that they intend to exit as a shareholder in ST-Ericsson. And then following that announcement, Ericsson, on December 20, announces to all of you that we have taken a decision to not acquire the full majority of ST-Ericsson. Now during a few months here in the beginning of the year, we have been exploring various strategic options for the ST-Ericsson assets, and that’s obviously the context of today’s call.

Key Points

Ericsson and STMicroelectronics have agreed on a separation of the
company into three parts – Ericsson takes on thin modem operations

The aim that we have with this takeover is obviously to maximize the value. And also, we believe that the modems here have a good fit into the strategies of our company. ST-Ericsson, then, unfortunately will have to carry out the restructuring activity in the remaining — remainder of the joint venture, we’ll come back to that.

Agreement aims to maximize assets and the future plans for both
parent companies as it relates to their respective strategies

ST-Ericsson to restructure current operations prior to separation

The closing of the transaction is expected during Q3, subject to
regulatory approvals

Costs for implementing this strategic plan, including Ericsson’s part of
ST-Ericsson’s restructuring, is provided for in the provisions of SEK
3.3 B. taken in 2012

So how will this work? So if we look at the split-up of the joint venture, and we again start with Ericsson on the right-hand side of this slide: We take on the design, the development and the sales of the LTE multimode thin modems, and that includes, then, 2G, 3G and 4G multimode. This will be approximately 1,800 employees and contractors. The main sites will be Sweden, Germany, India and China. And we will then be financially responsible for this part of the JV from March 1, 2013.

On the ST side, they will take over the existing products in the JV other than the LTE modems, then, and then also all other related business as well as certain assembly and test facilities. This will be approximately 950 employees and with the main sites being France and Italy. And they will also then be financially responsible for that from 1st of March this year.

In the JV, then, they will — it will be then restructuring activity that have commenced today. And the remainder of the joint venture will then be, over time here, reduced and run down. And then also, we will look at selling the connectivity business. All in all, this is approximately 1,600 employees and contractors, and you’ll have around 200 of those being employees and contractors in the connectivity business. So this is the split-up of the JV.

Modems of Strategic Value for Industry

Ericsson takes control of the thin modem business targeting smartphones and tablets
– Significant amounts invested to establish industry leading technology and IP
– Leverage our heritage and investment in leading research, global standardization and industry leading infrastructure solutions
Thin modem architecture covers
– Low power, highly integrated multi-mode multiband modems for GSM/GPRS/EDGE, TDSCDMA, HSPA+, LTE (TDD/FDD), LTEAdvanced
– Widest array of frequency bands and a feature set that includes Single RF Chip Carrier Aggregation, VoLTE and IMS

First of all, we’ve said in the past that we believe that the modem assets have a strategic value to the wireless industry, so this is consistent with what we’re trying to explain here. We are taking over the thin modem business, and the target market is the smartphones and the tablets. We’ve invested significant amounts of money to establish this position from a product perspective, from a testing perspective and where we are with the thin modems today within the joint venture. This also leverages our heritage and the investment in our R&D standardization and in, of course, our leading infrastructure solutions.

In terms of the thin modem architecture and what it covers, we believe we have advantages on low power. It’s highly integrated multimode, multi-baseband, with a variety of GSM, GPRS, EDGE, TD, HSPA, LTE TDD/FDD and then LTE Advanced. So it’s very comprehensive. And of course, some of the other features that will — sets this apart: It’s a Single RF Chip Carrier Aggregation. It includes VoLTE and IMS.

Total Addressable Market

+400 m thin modem units in 2013 for smartphones/tablets
Best estimate of the market for thin modems is an ASP of approximately USD 13-18 in 2013.
Ericsson aims to be top 3 in that market
Connected devices: M2M, Modules (via industrial partners), and other data centric devices
License business model towards ModAp market: +400 m ModAp market

… in terms of the market itself that we’re targeting. Again, focus on the thin modems, and we see over 400 million units on the thin modems in 2013. That’s the green area, and that’s growing at 10%. We see the average sales price of approximately $13 to $18. And it’s — our aspiration is to be in the top 3 in this market.

In addition, there are other markets to connected devices: machine-to-machine, modules, data-centric devices. And then of course, there’s an opportunity to move toward a license business model with the ModAp in the ModAp market. But we’re very clear: the thin modem is a — going to be our focus, it’s going to be a focused organization. And again, it’s a 400 million unit in 2013, moving to greater than 600 million, from a market perspective, in 2017.

…

Next Steps and Ambitions

If we then look at the next steps. So we will now obviously finalize the formal break-up of the JV. ST-Ericsson will carry out the necessary restructuring of what this will remain — will — what will remain in the JV, and then we will move on with the necessary approvals. We think that the break-up will be completed by the third quarter 2013.

If we look at the product portfolio, then. The modem 7450 will have a volume ramp-up in the first half of 2014. And then it will be — the follow-up product will be the M7500. That work — will have a volume ramp-up in the first half of 2015. When we look at these — we are excited about the modem company, obviously, and the thin modem products. We will look at success in an 18- to 24-month time frame. Again, as Doug mentioned, the — our ambition is to be top 3 in the thin modem market and, of course, that this segment should add to Ericsson overall profitability.

Introducing ST-Ericsson latest advanced LTE modem (This is a slideshow without audio) [STEricssonVideos YouTube channel, Feb 24, 2013] i.e. the M7450

[the previous transcript continued]
Question-and-Answer Session

…

So what we’ve been trying to tell you is that we take over the thin modem products, which is, today, it’s 7400 which the mass-market product will be 7450. The legacy modem products will all be with ST, so this is the thin modem business. And all the assumptions around the ramp-up and so forth is in this slide: We have — the first half of 2014 will be the volume ramp-up of 7450, first half of 2015 will be the ramp-up of M7500. So that’s the business that Ericsson is taking over. And it’s correct to assume that, this year, in 2013, we don’t think there will be a lot of revenue on these modems.

…

Q: … I guess I would have thought that, if your position in thin modem multimode LTE was that exciting and an established semis company might have been better positioned to leverage that. …

… we … think that the modem, thin modem, business has a strategic value for the industry. We think it’s important, with more alternatives. That is — obviously goes hand-in-hand with our company overall mission around the network society, 50 billion connected devices, and so forth. So from that point of view, I think the strategic intent is quite clear. I also think that we have been reviewing a lot of different strategic options. This, what we present today, is the best solution out of all the different options that we have looked at. And we are here today to really welcome the modem company into Ericsson. And we are also convinced that we will be able to add value to the industry, which we have been stating for, for quite some time now.

… first and foremost, we have a product, okay? That product is in the market. It‘s been trialed, so the development effort has been worthwhile. We also have customers. I also think that, Ericsson working with the modem company and other partners in the industry, we have a very important role to play when it comes to connecting the access points with the networks. And I think we have — I think we have a very good role to play in this, and also very skilled engineers. That kind of work together end to end.

Q: … you’ve said your ambition is to be a top 3 player in this market. So would this mean that you may have to raise your investments in this business going forward? And secondly, you mentioned good customer traction with your existing thin modems, but I believe 7400 was being sampled, too, last year. But you are essentially indicating that there will be no revenue for — from 7400 this year. So I mean, how does this change with 7450? Are you already seeing some customers signing up on the product?

… We have — first and foremost, what we will take over once this — we have gotten all of the regulatory approvals is a thin modem operation with around 1,800 employees and contractors. We think that — given the portfolio ambition and the sales ambition we have, that the resources we have in that unit will be sufficient to deliver on the ambitions. So that’s what we have said and that’s what we will repeat again.

Showcasing Thor M7400 at CES [STEricssonVideos YouTube channel, Jan 15, 2013]

[0:34] It is AVAILABLE NOW and you will see it IN your favorite PRODUCTS 2nd HALF THIS YEAR [0:39]

[the previous transcript continued]
Just to start with the — as you say, the 7400, that has been in customer testing. It’s been in field operator testing in the past, first global field operator testing. The 7450 has always been our expected mass product. 7450 has a smaller footprint, carrier aggregation and a variety of different other attributes, but it’s based on the 7400 software that has gone through this testing. So we’ve had very positive feedback and interest on the 7400, in terms of the architecture, and certainly on the 7450 and our current plans and timelines that we have with the 7450.

Q: So basically, if I look at the market, most of your competition is moving towards an integrated model where you have baseband and apps processor, but it seems that you are trying to focus more on the modem technology. And I’m just trying to understand what do you — why do you think this strategy is going to be more successful than what your competition is doing. And also, basically, your ambition is to be a top 3 player in this market long term. Once we get there, what do you think would be the long-term profitability in this business?

What we’re doing is we have been a very focused team, just as Jan said. As we’ve made this split, it’s going to be a very focused, competent team that’s just focused on the thin modems. As we presented earlier, we believe there’s a big-enough market in the thin modem area. And certainly, our expertise is more on the modem side than the application processor side, and that’s where we want to put our focus and our strength.

… then on the profitability, I think that what we will — the way we will measure success here in this business will be — will obviously be around achieving a top 3 position in the thin modem market. We have talked about the size of that market in terms of 400 million units, approximately, for 2013; also with the ASP there of between $13 and $18. We also will measure success in getting high volumes of the 7450 modem. And then we will also measure success when this LTE thin multimode modem business adds to the Ericsson group profitability. So those are the first, I would say, midterm objectives. And as we have said before, we will measure this in an 18- to 24-months perspective, so that’s kind of the time frame. We are — we also, then, have given you an indication on the resources in the unit that we take over, and we have also said that we think that this will be sufficient for the product portfolio ambition and so forth. So I think we have given you quite a lot for you to model a possible break-even point and so forth of this business.

Q: I would like to start quickly on the — well, what you’re planning to do actually with the ModAp business. So STMicro told us this morning that they are planning to discontinue basically working on that. And you are now clearly focusing on making your same — standalone modem. But do you have the ambition to eventually license your IP so that other companies that don’t have the existing modem capabilities are able to do ModAp processors?

Yes. So our primary focus is going to be the thin modem product itself. We certainly will look at machine-to-machine connected devices and potential for licensing the thin modem to customers that have the application processor. And that’s probably where we are right now in terms of our business plan and our revenue models.

Q: … as you fairly mentioned, there’s only one company shipping such products today, but there is also a lot of roadmaps that we’ve seen from some other of your — some of your other new competitors now are planning to release this kind of products as well at the end of this year and early next year. So how do you expect that to play over the long term? Do you think you have something that already gives you a head start of 6 month or 1 year on this front?

… we feel very committed to this thin modem because we have been monitoring the progress of not only ours but our competition in terms of the attributes and the characters of the unique selling points. We’ve invested a lot in this thin modem. We’ve seen the test results and where we see going forward with the 7450. So we’re confident, but we also know it’s going to be a tough market. But as we said in the past 6 months, we believe this is an asset that’s important to the industry.

Q: … will it be treated as licensing revenues?

No.

Demonstrating 150Mbps with Thor M7450 [STEricssonVideos YouTube channel, Feb 27, 2013]

THOR M7450 – LTE ADVANCED [ST-Ericsson product microsite, Feb 24, 2013]

Bringing Carrier Aggregation to the mainstream market

With the roll out of LTE and LTE Advanced technologies, device manufacturers face a number of new challenges. Operators require terminals that support an increased number of frequency bands and consumers expect increased data speed and improved battery lifetime. Device makers, however, cannot compromise device design and will need modem solutions that can do more within the same footprint.

Carrier Aggregation is one of the most important features in LTE Advanced that helps to address these challenges. It overcomes the fragmentation of the frequency spectrum by using multiple component carriers to increase the transmission bandwidth and data rate for an individual user.

The Thor M7450 is a multimode multiband platform supporting Carrier Aggregation with a single chip RF transceiver and support for over 17 bands. The complete modem is a highly integrated two chip solution with integrated memory. It delivers download speeds up to 150Mbps and is based on the revolutionary architecture introduced in Thor M7400 which enables market-leading power consumption.

Thor M7450 solves the design challenges and adds a number of new features in a solution footprint which makes it possible for phone manufacturers add LTE advanced without increasing size.

HIGHLIGHTS

For global devices

LTE FDD/TDD, HSPA+, TD-SCDMA, GSM

Single radio transceiver with support for 17+ bands

A streamlined modem

Highly integrated two chip solution with integrated RAM and single chip RF Carrier Aggregation

Power efficient architecture

For all devices

Interfaces for data devices and smartphone application processors

Complete and pre-tested reference design

Thor M7450 Carrier Aggregation [STEricssonVideos YouTube channel, Feb 26, 2013]

THOR™ M7400 LTE AND HSPA+ [ST-Ericsson product microsite, Feb 15, 2011]

Paves the way for global LTE devices

The Thor™ M7400 is a new generation of multimode mobile broadband modem. It supports the latest LTE and HSPA+ technologies. The small form factor and high power efficiency of the M7400 enable slim form factor smartphones, tablets and other mobile broadband enabled devices. The advanced multimode RF design offers new level of flexibility to support regional LTE FDD/TDD/HSPA bands in Asia, Europe and North America in combination with global HSPA/EDGE.

A breakthrough in modem architecture delivers an optimum combination of hardware acceleration, for lowest power consumption, and flexible execution in software allowing feature and performance enhancements in existing hardware.

Equipped with the latest communication interfaces it enables efficient integration between application processor and modem, including memory-less modem design when combining with an application processor.

HIGHLIGHTS

Truly global

LTE FDD/TDD, HSPA+, EDGE

Radio supporting up to 16 LTE/WCDMA/GSM bands

A streamlined modem

Smallest two-chip thin modem solution

Power efficient architecture

Highly integrated radio solution

For all devices

Interfaces for data devices and smartphone application processors

Memory-less modem design possible when combined with an application processor

Complete and pre-tested reference design

Making a CS fallback from LTE to 3G, and back again, while streaming video [STEricssonVideos YouTube channel, Feb 27, 2013]

Demonstration with ST-Ericsson’s Thor M7400, while doing a CS fallback from LTE to 3G while a video is being streamed. The demonstration shows on the session continuity, keeping the media stream while switching between the different modes.

CS-Fallback – An Introduction [WirelessMoves, Feb 19, 2012]

One approach to deploying LTE without packet switched voice call functionality at the beginning is to instruct mobile devices to use a 2G and 3G network when the user makes or receives a voice call and return to LTE afterwards. This solution is referred to as CS fallback and has been specified in 3GPP TS 23.272. As it’s likely that it will be deployed over time in quite a number of networks and used over many years, I thought I have once again a closer look at the specs and write a little primer about it. A little warning: This is somewhat of a propeller head post which requires some background knowledge on the circuit switched core network of GSM and UMTS and how LTE works.

…

International Roaming

As CS fallback is not a Voice over IP technology, it is likely that it will mostly be used in LTE networks before VOLTE becomes available. Furthermore, CS fallback can be used as a backup solution in roaming scenarios in which voice capable LTE devices are roaming in a foreign LTE network in which VOLTE is not available or in case no roaming agreement is in place for IMS voice services.

Pros and Cons of CS fallback

The main advantage of CS fallback is that it will enable network operators and device manufacturers to introduce LTE devices with a single cellular radio chip before VOLTE becomes available and network are deployed widely enough to prevent having to hand over the call to UMTS or GSM too often (how that is done is another story).

…

Summary

CS fallback sounds easy but from the description above I think it is quite clear that it is not quite that. A new interface to be implemented in the MSC software and the MME, the use of roaming retry functionality that is not used so far (please correct me if I’m wrong) and the new CS fallback flag in the location update message will keep network and device engineers busy for a while. A lot of effort for a “temporary” solution.

Making VoLTE [Voice over LTE] voice calls that last [STEricssonVideos YouTube channel, Feb 27, 2013]

A demonstration using ST-Ericsson’s Thor M7400 and NovaThor L8540 platforms, showing on the high audio quality and the low power consumption

What is VoLTE | Voice over LTE | Tutorial [Radio-Electronics.com, Feb 18, 2010]

The Voice over LTE, VoLTE scheme was devised as a result of operators seeking a standardised system for transferring voice traffic over LTE. Originally LTE was seen as a completely IP cellular system just for carrying data, and operators would be able to carry voice either by reverting to 2G / 3G systems or by using VoIP.

…

In many ways the implementation of VoLTE at a high level is straightforward. The handset or phone needs to have software loaded to provide the VoLTE functionality. This can be in the form of an App.

The network then requires to be IMS compatible.

While this may appear straightforward, there are many issues for this to be made operational, especially via the vagaries of the radio access network where time delays and propagation anomalies add considerably to the complexity.

See also: LTE / Voice calls and LTE / Enhanced voice quality [both in Wikipedia]

The world’s first dual mode high definition VoLTE [STEricssonVideos YouTube channel, Feb 26, 2013]

The demonstration was conducted at China Mobile’s booth using ST-Ericsson’s commercial Thor LTE multimode modem, and connected to Ericsson’s commercially verified LTE FDD/TDD converged network and mature IMS platform.

Company press releases

ST-ERICSSON UNVEILS ULTRAFAST THOR M7450 LTE ADVANCED MODEM WITH FIRST SINGLE RF CARRIER AGGREGATION SOLUTION [press release, Feb 24, 2013]

Thor M7450 Modem includes support for 150Mbps and an extensive number of frequency bands.

Barcelona, February 24, 2013 – Today at Mobile World Congress 2013, ST-Ericsson, a world leader in wireless platforms and semiconductors, announced the Thor™ M7450 LTE Advanced modem which uses a single radio for Carrier Aggregation. The M7450 supports all relevant 3GPP specified frequency bands having 10 flexible RF ports enabling 17 frequency bands or more in the same device. With this modem, ST-Ericsson significantly increases the number of LTE bands compared to devices currently on the market allowing device manufacturers to address a global market with less number of device variants.

With the roll out of LTE and LTE Advanced technologies, device manufacturers face a number of new challenges. Operators require terminals that support an increased number of frequency bands and consumers expect increased data speed and improved battery lifetime. Phone makers, however, cannot compromise device design and will need modem solutions that can do more in the same footprint.

“There is an ever increasing demand for mobile broadband access no matter where you are in the world, making the ability to efficiently handle data traffic a top priority for our customers and operators,” says Staffan Iveberg, Senior Vice President of Thor Modem Solutions for ST-Ericsson. “Next-generation modems need to combine extensive frequency band support to offer flexibility for operators and markets – all without increasing the modem size. ST-Ericsson is leading the way with the Thor M7450 LTE Advanced modem.”

Today, many operators only have 5 or 10 MHz bandwidth allocations in each frequency band for LTE which is insufficient for LTE Category 3 or 4 with data rates up to 100 or 150 Mbps. Carrier Aggregation allows bandwidth from two different frequency bands to be combined enabling higher data rates.

“With the Thor M7450, we are continuing to innovate in modem technology to bring increased download speed without compromising on size or power consumption,” continued Iveberg. “No one else is delivering a complete LTE Advanced modem that is both fast and power efficient in this compact size.”

The Thor M7450 is a two chip solution with integrated RAM to enable a compact size. The M7450 is designed in 28nm CMOS technology and builds on the revolutionary architecture introduced in Thor M7400 which delivers market-leading power consumption. It supports 3GPP Release 10, LTE category 4, with downlink speeds up to 150Mbps and VoLTE. With LTE-FDD, LTE-TDD, HSPA+, GSM and TD-SCDMA integrated in the same chipset, the M7450 addresses the need for a simple and cost effective solution for widespread global adoption of LTE devices.

The Thor M7450 is being demonstrated by ST-Ericsson in Barcelona this week and is currently sampling with customers.

For additional information, a white paper is available here.

CHANGING THE GAME: ST-ERICSSON UNVEILS NOVATHOR™ FAMILY OF SMARTPHONE PLATFORMS COMBINING ITS MOST ADVANCED APPLICATION PROCESSORS WITH THE LATEST GENERATION OF MODEMS [press release, Feb 15, 2011]

ST-Ericsson today announced three new application processors, the Nova A9600, A9540, A9500 together with two next generation modems the Thor M7400 and M7300 as well as two additions to its complete highly integrated smartphone platforms the NovaThor T5008 and U4500.

…

ST-Ericsson’s new Thor modems, the Thor M7400 and the Thor M7300, support the latest LTE and HSPA+ dual carrier technologies, while preserving backward compatibility with existing 3G/2G networks, in a small and highly-integrated radio solution that supports up to eight LTE/WCDMA/GSM frequency bands. These modems enable the development of truly global smartphones, tablets and many other mobile broadband-enabled devices.

…

The Thor M7400 can connect to 2G, 3G, TD-SCDMA, HSPA, HSPA+ dual carrier and LTE FDD/TDD networks. It offers peak download speeds of up to 100Mbps in LTE networks. The Thor M7400 supports voice calls via fallback to circuit-switched networks and via the VoLTE (Voice over LTE) standard, it is sampling Q2 2011.

ST-ERICSSON’S HIGH-PERFORMANCE MODEMS PAVE THE WAY FOR GLOBAL LTE DEVICES [press release, Feb 15, 2011]

… The Thor M7400 is the industry’s smallest and first two-chip LTE/HSPA+ modem, which also continues the low power consumption track record from ST-Ericsson’s market-leading HSPA+ modems. …

… “In Thor, ST-Ericsson’s engineers have achieved the optimum combination of hardware acceleration, for low power consumption, and execution in software, enabled by our in-house vector processing technology, which offers the flexibility to continuously add features and performance enhancements to existing chipset hardware,” said Jörgen Lantto, executive vice president, chief technology and strategy officer of ST-Ericsson. “Our radio solution is unique in that it supports the regional LTE FDD/TDD bands in use in Asia, Europe and North America, as well as HSPA/EDGE networks worldwide, allowing device manufacturers to offer truly global devices.”

The ThorM7400 and ThorM7300 modems are based on a common architecture, enabling ST-Ericsson and its customers to benefit from shorter time-to-market by re-using of modem certification and application processor interfaces across platforms, reducing time-to-market. The new Thor modems are also pin-to-pin compatible which enables customers to completely reuse their design across the two platforms. …

Available for operator testing and integration into devices from Q2 2011, the Thor M7400 modem can connect to 2G, 3G, TD-SCDMA, HSPA, HSPA+ dual carrier and LTE FDD/TDD networks. It offers peak download speeds of up to 100Mbps in LTE networks. The ThorM7400 supports voice calls via fallback to circuit-switched networks and via the VoLTE (Voice over LTE) standard.

…

ST-Ericsson developed high-performance vector processing (EVP) to efficiently handle complex computational tasks for all access standards. It is currently used in ST-Ericsson TD-SCDMA platforms.

ST-ERICSSON THOR M7400 MODEM SELECTED AS CES 2012 INNOVATIONS HONOREE [press release, Nov 8, 2011]

… The ST-Ericsson Thor M7400 4G multimode modem delivers the high power efficiency and compact footprint needed to enable sleek and slim form factor smartphones, tablets and other connected devices. The Thor M7400 is a groundbreaking multimode solution, supporting the latest LTE, HSPA+ and TD-HSPA mobile broadband technologies, and enables efficient integration between application processor and modem.

“The Thor M7400 sets a new standard for 4G multimode modems delivering extremely high data performance, low power consumption and size advantage over alternative solutions,” said Jörgen Lantto, executive vice president and chief technology officer at ST-Ericsson. “To further optimize its footprint, the Thor M7400 includes memory-less technology to optimally integrate with application processors in 4G mobile broadband devices. As a result, the Thor M7400 makes ultra-fast web browsing and high speed data connectivity ubiquitous, easy and reliable. We are proud to have our innovative product recognized by the Consumer Electronics Association.”

STMicroelectronics Announces Resignation of Didier Lamouche [STMicroelectronics press release, March 11, 2013]

STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM), a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronic applications, announced today that Didier Lamouche, Chief Operating Officer, whose operational role was suspended when he took the assignment as President and Chief Executive Officer at ST-Ericsson in December 2011, has decided to resign from the company effective March 31, 2013 to pursue other opportunities.

“Over the past years Didier has brought his strong contribution to ST, initially as the Chief Operating Officer, and then taking the challenging task to lead ST-Ericsson” saidCarlo Bozotti, President and CEO of ST. “We thank him for his outstanding contribution and wish him all the best for his future”.

About STMicroelectronics

ST is a global leader in the semiconductor market serving customers across the spectrum of sense and power and automotive products and embedded processing solutions. From energy management and savings to trust and data security, from healthcare and wellness to smart consumer devices, in the home, car and office, at work and at play, ST is found everywhere microelectronics make a positive and innovative contribution to people’s life. By getting more from technology to get more from life, ST stands for life.augmented.

In 2012, the Company’s net revenues were $8.49 billion. Further information on ST can be found at www.st.com

ST-ERICSSON ANNOUNCES CHANGE IN EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT [ST-Ericsson press release, March 11, 2011]

Following the STMicroelectronics’ announcement issued earlier today, ST-Ericsson, a joint venture of STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM) and Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC), announced today that Didier Lamouche, president and chief executive officer, has decided to resign from the Company to pursue other opportunities.

Hans Vestberg, Chairman of the ST-Ericsson’s board of directors, said: “Didier Lamouche came into ST-Ericsson when the company was in a very challenging situation and has been instrumental in bringing the company to the point where it is more focused on strategy execution, a much lower breakeven point and positive momentum where the new LTE modem-based products are ready for market introduction this year. On behalf of ST-Ericsson’s board, I thank Didier for his strong contribution to ST-Ericsson.”

Lamouche will remain in his current position until March 31, 2013.

ABOUT ST-ERICSSON

ST-Ericsson is a world leader in developing and delivering a complete portfolio of innovative mobile platforms and cutting-edge wireless semiconductor solutions across the broad spectrum of mobile technologies. ST-Ericsson was established as a 50/50 joint venture by STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM) and Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) in February 2009, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

www.stericsson.com
www.twitter.com/STEricssonForum

ST-ERICSSON ANNOUNCES GLOBAL WORKFORCE REVIEW [ST-Ericsson press release, March 18, 2011]

ST-Ericsson, a joint venture (JV) of STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM) and Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC), today announced a plan for a global workforce review, following the announcement made today by Ericsson and STMicroelectronics about the future of the joint venture.

The proposed key steps of agreement between the parent companies include each parent taking on parts of ST-Ericsson. It is proposed that Ericsson will assume approximately 1,800 employees and contractors, with the largest concentrations in Sweden, Germany, India and China. It is also proposed that ST will assume approximately 950 employees, primarily in France and in Italy, to support ongoing business and new products development within ST.

In addition, ST-Ericsson is pursuing external options for the future of the connectivity business, which employs around 200 employees worldwide.

In connection with the transfer of the majority of its workforce to the parent companies, ST-Ericsson will carry out restructuring of its current operations which could impact some 1,600 employees worldwide, out of which in a range of 500-700 are in Europe, including 400 to 600 positions in Sweden and 50 to 80 positions in Germany.

ST-Ericsson – with the support of both parent companies – will honor all obligations to employees, including those related to restructuring.

The proposed changes are subject to negotiations with work councils and employee representatives as required.

Ericsson and STMicroelectronics agree on strategic way forward for ST-Ericsson [STMicroelectronics press release, March 18, 2013]

Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) and STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM) today announced an agreement on the way forward for the joint venture (JV) ST-Ericsson. As communicated by the parent companies in December 2012, both have been working together toward a strategic solution for the JV. After months of intensive joint work, the parent companies have selected the strategic option which maximizes their respective future prospects and growth plans.

The main steps agreed upon to split up the JV are the following:

Ericsson will take on the design, development and sales of the LTE multimode thin modem products, including 2G, 3G and 4G multimode
ST will take on the existing ST-Ericsson products, other than LTE multimode thin modems, and related business as well as certain assembly and test facilities
Starting the close down of the remaining parts of ST-Ericsson.

The formal transfer of the relevant parts of ST-Ericsson to the parent companies is expected to be completed during the third quarter of 2013, subject to regulatory approvals.

After the split up it is proposed that Ericsson will assume approximately 1,800 employees and contractors, with the largest concentrations in Sweden, Germany, India and China.

It is also proposed that ST will assume approximately 950 employees, primarily in France and in Italy, to support ongoing business and new products development within ST.

Today, it is also announced that Carlo Ferro is appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of ST-Ericsson, effective April 1, 2013. Ferro is currently Chief Operating Officer of ST-Ericsson and succeeds Didier Lamouche who, as previously announced, will pursue opportunities outside the company. Ferro will lead the work in securing both business continuity of ST-Ericsson and effective completion of the transition phase.

Hans Vestberg, President and CEO, Ericsson and Chairman of the Board of Directors, ST-Ericsson said: “I welcome Carlo Ferro as the new President and CEO of ST-Ericsson. Carlo has over twenty years of experience in the semiconductor industry and a strong track record in driving and managing complex transformation projects. He has been a contributor to the solid progress ST-Ericsson has made the past year in terms of strategy execution and significantly lowering the breakeven point.”

“In line with what we announced in December last year, we have now moved to the next step of our exit process and found a solution with Ericsson that fully aligns with our new strategy”, said Carlo Bozotti, President and CEO of ST. “The agreement made with Ericsson represents a major step forward in reaching our new financial model target and allows us to further strengthen the skillsets of our company, by welcoming in ST, at completion, additional strong competences to fuel growth in specific key product areas. Moreover, it protects and leverages the ongoing ST-Ericsson’s business, allowing us to reinforce our relationships with key customers, both of ST and of ST-Ericsson”.

With the proposed transfer of competencies from ST-Ericsson, ST will further strengthen its capabilities in the areas of application processors, RF, analog and power as well as software and complex system integration. In addition, ST-Ericsson’s portfolio includes devices that are complementary to ST’s focus on the fastest growing segments of the wireless semiconductor market, such as system-optimized analog mixed signal and power management devices, high-quality, low-power audio and video enhancements and innovative energy harvesting solutions.

The agreement is fully in line with ST’s financial model target of an operating margin of 10 percent or more and with plans to reduce quarterly net operating expenses to an average quarterly rate in the range of $600 million to $650 million by the beginning of 2014.

In addition, as a result of the agreement, ST expects to incur cash costs, including the covering of ST-Ericsson’s ongoing operations during the transition period and its restructuring costs, in the range of approximately $350 million to $450 million, narrower than the range provided at the end of January 2013.

New and successful “post feature phone” business of Nokia with a new set of risks and uncertainties

March 18, 2013 11:06 am / 1 Comment on New and successful “post feature phone” business of Nokia with a new set of risks and uncertainties

Nokia successfully got over the “post feature phone” situation described a year ago as:

… many mid-range to high-end feature phones increasingly offer access to the Internet and applications and provide more smartphone-like features and design, blurring the distinction between smartphones and feature phones. We are subject to intense competition over the entire spectrum we address through our Mobile Phones business unit. Recently, smartphones of other manufacturers, particularly Android-based smartphones, are reaching lower price points, which is increasingly reducing the addressable market and lowering the price points for feature phones. …

… For higher-end feature phones in particular, the platform is a differentiating element with the addition of new functionalities and possibilities for customization and an improved user experience. If we are unable to produce competitive low-end and high-end feature phones and preserve our market share and profitability of our feature phones business, our business, results of operation and financial condition could be materially and adversely affected.

Now it has new types of affordable devices for which it needs only to add:

Continuation with their affordability
“… very rapid and low-cost production … increasingly at lower price points …”
Ability “to produce competitive devices at various price points”

This significant achievement is well reflected in the changes of the title of the risk descriptions:

pp.18-19 of the Nokia SEC filing for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2011 (FY11)

pp. 15-17 of the Nokia SEC filing for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2012 (FY12)

We may not be able to produce attractive and competitive feature phones, including devices with more smartphone-like features, in a timely and cost efficient manner with differentiated hardware, software, localized services and applications.

We may not be able to produce attractive and competitive devices in our Mobile Phones business unit, including feature phones and devices with features such as full touch that can be categorized as smartphones, in a timely and cost efficient manner with differentiated hardware, software, localized services and applications.

Consequently there is a new set of risks and uncertainties associated with that new “post feature phone” space as follows (highlighted full text comparisons of FY11 vs. FY12 you can see in a PDF format downloadable from here):

The market we address with the more affordable devices from our Mobile Phones business unit may further reduce in size if the higher-end price points become dominated by more affordable smartphones, such as Android-based smartphones, and the higher-end devices from our Mobile Phones business unit are not sufficiently competitive compared to those.

The features of higher-end devices from our Mobile Phones business unit may not be sufficiently competitive compared to more affordable smartphones, such as Android-based smartphones.

Our estimates of the growth potential in the markets we address through our Mobile Phones business unit may not be accurate and as such result in misplaced investments of resources.

…

Speed of shifts in market development and demand, for example, related to 2G, 3G and 4G mobile communication technology transitions and requirements, may be faster than we have anticipated, making our Mobile Phones portfolio less competitive if we are unable to timely develop and produce devices addressing such shifts.

We are using our internally developed platforms for our devices from the Mobile Phones business unit, which may hinder our ability or increase our costs in integrating hardware and sourcing components and other parts due to limitations in the platform and vendors tooling their supply and configurations for devices that operate on other platforms.

If the platforms that we use for our devices from the Mobile Phones business unit are not sufficiently competitive or otherwise optimal for our devices, developing the platform or switching to another platform may be time-consuming and costly, and there are no guarantees that our competitive position would benefit from such actions or that the development costs would result in a positive return on our investments. If the attractiveness of the platforms we use in the Mobile Phones business unit deteriorates, corrective actions will consume time and resources from us and may not lead to desired results, and may expose our Mobile Phones business unit to a significant deterioration in competiveness.

[vs. just a too general statement for all that used a year ago:

We may need to make significant investments to further develop platforms for devices from our Mobile Phones business unit. There can be no assurances regarding consumer acceptance of such platform developments or that the development costs would result in a positive return on our investments.]

…

There are shifts in the desired features and products in the market that are appealing to customers and consumers and such shifts may not be in our favor from a net sales or profitability perspective; for instance, QWERTY devices have been a traditional strength for us, but the overall market demand for QWERTY devices has declined and is expected to continue to decline.

[vs. nothing said about that a year ago]

Nokia’s expanded, new risks and uncertainties for its Windows Phone strategy for 2013

March 17, 2013 12:21 am / 2 Comments on Nokia’s expanded, new risks and uncertainties for its Windows Phone strategy for 2013

According to the Nokia SEC filing for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2012 (FY12) vs. that of the Nokia SEC filing for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2011 (FY11):

As per the “Risks and Uncertainties” sections in both, there are the following expanded texts in the FY12 section vs. that of in the FY11 section (highlighted full text comparisons you can see in a PDF format downloadable from here):

[We may not be able to make Nokia products with Windows Phone a competitive choice for consumers unless the Windows Phone ecosystem becomes a competitive and profitable global ecosystem that achieves sufficient scale, value and attractiveness to relevant market participants.]

We believe that successful smartphone platforms require a successful ecosystem around them. … Today, industry participants are creating competing ecosystems of mutually beneficial partnerships to combine hardware, software, services and an application environment to create high-quality differentiated smartphones. Certain smartphone platforms and their related ecosystems have gained significant momentum and market share, specifically Google’s Android platform and Apple’s iOS platform, and are continuing apace, with Android-based smartphones continuing to gain significant market share during 2012 and also reaching lower price points.

… Although Microsoft will continue to license Windows Phone to other mobile manufacturers, we believe we can differentiate Nokia smartphones from those of our competitors that also use the Windows Phone platform as well as other platforms. The first Nokia smartphones powered by Windows Phone were launched in October 2011 under the Lumia name. We launched additional Windows Phone 7 devices and the first Windows Phone 8 Lumia devices during 2012. See Item 4B. “Business Overview—Devices & Services—Smart Devices” for a more information.

…

Microsoft has recently launched the Windows 8 operating system used to power personal computers and tablets, and the related Windows Phone 8 operating system is used in the latest Nokia smartphones. The success of Nokia’s Windows Phone 8 smartphones will be negatively affected if the Windows 8 platform does not achieve or retain broad or timely market acceptance or is not preferred by ecosystem participants, mobile operators and consumers.

…

Other competitive major smartphone ecosystems, primarily Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS, have advantages that may be difficult for the Windows Phone ecosystem to overcome, such as first-mover advantage, momentum, a larger share of the smartphone market, engagement by developers, mobile operators and consumers and brand preference, and their advantages may become greater over time.

…

[acknowledging that] We may not be able to develop sufficient quantities of high-quality differentiated Nokia products with Windows Phone in order to achieve the scale needed for a competitive global ecosystem in a timely manner, or at all. [vs. just “execute with speed” a year ago]

…

Our competitors may use various technical and commercial means to make the Windows Phone ecosystem unattractive compared to other ecosystems, including for instance hindering application development, not providing tools to allow applications to be developed to industry standard or not allowing certain applications to work or work efficiently on the Windows Phone platform.
[vs. just “Other competitive major smartphone ecosystems have advantages that may be difficult for us to overcome, such as first-mover advantage, momentum, engagement by developers, mobile operators and consumers and brand preference, and their advantages may become even greater before we complete our transition to the Windows Phone platform.” a year ago]

…

The Windows Phone ecosystem is relatively small, and thus it may not be compelling for hardware and software suppliers and developers, which may for instance lead to our reliance on a limited number of suppliers, later availability of the latest innovations and increased cost of components and software.

Mobile devices are increasingly used with other technical appliances, for instance speakers and car audio systems or have accessories and gadgets that can be used in conjunction with the mobile device. As the Windows Phone ecosystem is relatively small, it may not be compelling for third parties to design such technical appliances, accessories or gadgets to a similar extent as with other ecosystems.

[As the recognition of the already observable effect of the “Other competitive major smartphone ecosystems, primarily Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS, have advantages that may be difficult for the Windows Phone ecosystem to overcome, such as …” vs. just a possible risk associated with “may not be able to attract developers and other participants to the Windows Phone ecosystem” a year ago]

…

The frequency of Windows Phone operating system updates may be too slow and the platform may be too closed to address changing market and customer requirements in a timely manner, which may erode customer support and consumer attractiveness of the platform.

Emergence of new alternative ecosystems and platforms could make the Windows Phone ecosystem less attractive to customers and consumers.

As well as per:

[Our success in the smartphone market depends on our ability to introduce and bring to market quantities of attractive, competitively priced Nokia products with Windows Phone that are positively differentiated from our competitors’ products, both outside and within the Windows Phone ecosystem, and receive broad market acceptance.]

[despite of all the risks and uncertainties already given there is no change in the sense that]
Our strategy is to compete in the smartphone market with Nokia products with Windows Phone.

…

[but there are new warnings that]
The Microsoft Windows Phone platform … may limit our ability to … bring certain hardware capabilities at the higher price points.

… we may not be able to introduce functionalities such as advanced imaging and sensor technology …

[as well as more intensive warnings by saying that there is]
… lack of proper training of sales personnel, insufficient marketing support and experience
[vs. using just the “inadequate” attribute a year ago]
… still relatively unfamiliar Windows Phone platform in an otherwise highly competitive market.
[vs. “new and” used a year ago]

[Regarding “Microsoft may not be able to provide the software innovations and features we rely on for the Windows Phone operating system in a timely manner, if at all” it is now added that]
Additionally, we are dependent on Microsoft for timely error corrections for customer and country variants as well as generic software releases.

Other manufacturers also produce competing mobile products which are based on the Windows Phone operating system. We may face increased competition from other manufacturers, including Microsoft, who already produce or may produce competing Windows Phone based products. Increased competition within the Windows Phone ecosystem could result for instance in lower sales of our devices or lower potential for a profitable business model.

We are aiming to expand our Windows Phone-based products to lower price points. The availability of Windows Phone-based products that we or our competitors offer at lower price points may have a negative effect on the sales of our higher priced Windows Phone-based products.

With all that it is the case that

[Our partnership with Microsoft is subject to risks and uncertainties.]

In addition to the factors outlined above in connection with the Windows Phone ecosystem and sales of Nokia products with Windows Phone …

[i.e. as the result of the above added risks there is an enhanced warning that]
A further change in smartphone strategy either by Microsoft or Nokia could be costly and further adversely affect our market share, competitiveness and profitability.
[vs. without that “either by Microsoft or Nokia” stated a year ago, meaning that on either side there is an increased risk in that regard vs. that of a year ago]
[as well as adding now that]
Microsoft could provide better support to another device manufacturer which produces devices that run on the Windows Phone platform

…

We license from Microsoft the Windows Phone operating system as our primary smartphone platform. Microsoft may act independently of us with respect to decisions and communications on that operating system which may have a negative effect on us. Moreover, if Microsoft reduces investment in that operating system or discontinues it, our smartphone strategy would be directly negatively affected by such acts.

Microsoft may make strategic decisions or changes that may be detrimental to us. For example, in addition to the Surface tablet, Microsoft may broaden its strategy to sell other mobile devices under its own brand, including smartphones. This could lead Microsoft to focus more on their own devices and less on mobile devices of other manufacturers that operate on the Windows Phone platform, including Nokia.

We may not be able to sufficiently influence Microsoft in bringing the features or functionalities for the Windows Phone platform that we deem most important, or Microsoft may otherwise focus on other areas of its business leading to reduced resources devoted to the Windows Phone platform or failures to implement features or functionalities. This may be heightened if our position in the partnership deteriorates, for instance through other companies using leverage to influence Microsoft, or if Microsoft chooses to develop its own mobile devices, including smartphones, or if Microsoft otherwise develops interests that are contrary to ours.

…

Processor	One Intel® Atom Processor S1260
Memory	8 GB DDR3 ECC 1333 MHz
Networking	Integrated dual-port 1Gb Ethernet NIC
Storage	500 GB or 1 TB HDD or SSD, non-hot-plug, small form factor
Operating systems	• Canonical Ubuntu 12.04 • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2

Resolution	2010	2011	2012
28-nanometer	–	1%	12%
40/45-nanometer	17%	26%	27%
65-nanometer	29%	29%	23%
90-nanometer	14%	9%	9%
0.11/0.13 micron	12%	8%	6%
0.15 micron	4%	6%	4%
0.18 micron	13%	12%	11%
0.25 micron	4%	4%	4%
0.35 micron	4%	3%	2%
≥0.5 micron	3%	2%	2%
Total	100%	100%	100%

Function	2010	2011⁽¹⁾	2012⁽¹⁾
Managers	3,142	3,601	3,865
Professionals	12,729	13,665	15,844
Assistant Engineers/Clericals	2,650	2,796	3,079
Technicians	14,711	15,395	16,479
Total	33,232	35,457	39,267

	2010	2011⁽¹⁾	2012⁽¹⁾
Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan	20,703	20,107	21,534
Southern Taiwan Science Park, Taiwan	9,158	9,041	8,964
Central Taiwan Science Park, Taiwan	29	1,410	3,558
Taoyuan County, Taiwan	–	1,333	1,378
China	1,903	2,134	2,353
North America	1,355	1,343	1,395
Europe	48	53	50
Japan	32	32	32
Korea	4	4	3
Total	33,232	35,457	39,267

Names of Shareholders	Number of Common Shares Owned	Percentage of Total Outstanding Common Shares
National Development Fund	1,653,709,980	6.38%
Capital World Investors	1,488,857,477	5.74%
Directors and executive officers as a group	291,940,745	1.13%

pp.18-19 of the Nokia SEC filing for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2011 (FY11)	pp. 15-17 of the Nokia SEC filing for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2012 (FY12)
We may not be able to produce attractive and competitive feature phones, including devices with more smartphone-like features, in a timely and cost efficient manner with differentiated hardware, software, localized services and applications.	We may not be able to produce attractive and competitive devices in our Mobile Phones business unit, including feature phones and devices with features such as full touch that can be categorized as smartphones, in a timely and cost efficient manner with differentiated hardware, software, localized services and applications.

Experiencing the Cloud

Author Archives: Nacsa Sándor

Labor shortages in China as young people are much less willing to work under harsh working conditions–all this “compensated” for the time being with compulsory student labor required to get the graduation certificates

Since the ODMs and related upstream suppliers are already facing labor shortages during the slow season (the first half) of 2013, the sources are concerned that the shortages will become more serious in the second half.

Acer’s 7-inch entry-level tablet is also suffering from unstable supply due to a labor shortage at component suppliers.

Quanta Computer plans to move all its notebook production except those for Apple, to its plants in Chongqing in 2013. Compal Electronics will shift 90% of its notebook capacity to Chongqing plants and will expand capacity in the second quarter.

FLA REPORT SHOWS SOME POLICY CHANGES AT FOXCONN BUT FEW IMPROVEMENTS FOR WORKERS [Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, Aug 24, 2012]

SACOM reiterates that factory inspection alone cannot eliminate labour rights violations. A democratic trade union trusted by workers is the most sustainable solution towards decent working conditions.

Dear Apple’s shareholders,

The centralization of notebook capacity in Chongqing and Chengdu has prompted component providers to consider moving production to the western regions of China as well.

The sources said the labor cost in inland China is relatively low compared to coastal regions but the transportation cost remains high. So far the cost difference in transportation has been subsidized by the local government but no one knows when the subsidy might end, the sources added.

The new rail route witnessed its official opening on Thursday night, after three test runs since March last year.

Clattering out of the station at about 9 p.m., the cargo train is set to travel 11,179 kilometers across the far western Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, before finally reaching Germany.

The route offers a major shortcut to the more traditional sea trade routes from Shanghai and Guangzhou, cutting travel time to Europe from about 36 days by container ship to just 13 days by freight train, said Huang Qifan, mayor of the inland business hub.

Huang said that the train is also safer and less expensive than sea transport.

Though the rails have been there for over ten years, the route is new as no train services linking Chongqing and Europe have been provided before due to complicated customs checks and cargo transfers, according to Ma Zhongyuan, director of Chongqing customs.

Last year, China signed a strategic agreement with Russia and Kazakhstan to open the new freight route, as the country is trying to build the inland labor-rich municipality into an international high-tech hub, especially for laptops.

Foxconn, the world’s biggest contract electronics supplier, Acer, Taiwan’s leading computer maker, and Hewlett-Packard(HP) are already in place in Chongqing to produce laptops.

In the first five months this year, Chongqing sold 2.43 million laptop computers abroad. The exports were valued at 840 million U.S. dollars, accounting for 20 percent of the city’s total export value.

The city’s export of new- and high-tech products totaled 14.26 billion in the period, up 182.5 percent year-on-year.

Officials believe the shorter transport time to Europe by railway will make made-in Chongqing notebook computers more competitive.

Last month, a new cargo air route also became available between Chongqing and the European cities of Moscow and Luxembourg.

The province-sized city is already a major transport center at the junction of China’s prosperous East and poorer West, as cargo can be sent out of Chongqing along the Yangtze River, the country’s longest waterway,via air and railway.

The new rail route will be used to link south China’s Pearl River Delta manufacturing hub and the country’s southwest industrial belt with Europe, officials said.

Just last mouth, a rail route connecting Chongqing and a port in the southern manufacturing hub of Shenzhen went into operation.

The transcontinental track will also boost trade between southeast Asia and the Europe, as railways have already linked Chongqing with the southwestern border province of Yunnan and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, said Cai Jin, vice president of the China Logistics and Purchasing Association.

Currently, the train only leaves Chongqing for Duisburg once a month, but train services may be increased to once per day in the future as the city’s exports to Europe increase, according to Huang.

Related:

Freight rail across Eurasia cuts travel time for trading goods between China, Europe

CHONGQING, May 10 (Xinhua) — A new freight rail has started operating across Eurasia, linking the southwest Chinese economic hub of Chongqing with the Port of Antwerp in Belgium and cutting the travel time for goods traded between China and Europe in half, officials said Tuesday.

NEW YORK, Sept. 22 (Xinhua) — Hewlett-Packard Co. will expand its presence in China, Larry Irving, the company’s vice president for global government affairs, said on Wednesday.

“Our goal in China is to be a good partner in China, to bring more products to the Chinese market and to be a good employer as well,” Irving told Xinhua at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York.

HP’s presence in China began in 1981 with the opening of the first China HP representative office in Beijing. After years of solidifying business relationship, China Hewlett-Packard, the first high-tech joint venture in China, was established in 1985.

Nowadays, HP is the second-largest PC maker and a leading foreign PC vendor in China.

Earlier this year, to bolster its presence in China, HP joined hands with China’s Chongqing to announce a plan to operate a 20,000-square-meter facility in the city, where it will make state-of-the-art notebook and desktop PCs.

Irving said HP will continue to invest in China.

“We have private conversation with the Chinese government, about our particular circumstances,” he added. “HP’s presence has been grown in China. We are making more investment in China, not less investment in China. We see China as a great opportunity.”

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said last week that China is committed to building an open and fair business environment for foreign investors.

“All foreign enterprises registered in China enjoy national treatment,” Wen said in a speech at the opening ceremony of Summer Davos 2010 in Tianjin.

NEW YORK, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) — The southwestern Chinese cities of Chongqing and Chengdu are among the best investment destinations in that country, several U.S. business executives agreed.

“Chongqing and Chengdu have such huge population centers, so they have greater opportunities than many other places,” David J. Hofmann, director for North America at Inter-China Consulting, told the China Investment Strategies Conference held here Wednesday.

Chongqing and Chengdu have enough labor forces to support the economic sector, especially some export-led industries, according to Hofmann, whohas 30-year business experience in China.

The two cities are also good places for innovators as they boast rich talent potentials, he added.

There are good universities and well-educated students in Chongqing and Chengdu who can play the operating and managing roles for investors’ companies, said the business executive.

Hofmann was echoed by Gene Huang, chief economist and vice president of FedEx, who said China’s strategy to develop its western regions is very supportive for doing business in Chongqing and Chengdu, which would remain attractive for U.S. investors “for quite some time.”

President and co-CEO of Tishman Speyer Rob Speyer also agreed that there are enormous government investments in the two cities.

CHONGQING, April 9 (Xinhua) — State Councilor Liu Yandong has called for more efforts in scientific and technological innovation to boost development in China’s Chongqing Municipality.

Liu made the remarks during a recent inspection tour of Chongqing, the only municipality in China’s central and western regions.

She said innovation in science and technology is crucial to combat the financial crisis, optimize industrial structure, adjust the economic growth mode, and to achieve fast development.

During her inspection, Liu visited schools, scientific research institutes, high-tech companies and cultural institutions.

BEIJING, Feb. 21 (Xinhua) — Disposable income was at 8,231 yuan (1,205 U.S. dollars) per capita in 2009 for Chongqing’s urban residents relocated to make way for the Three Gorges project, said the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of China Sunday.

The figure was 11.5 percent up from the previous year, according to a statement on the NBS website.

The growth could mainly be attributed to the steady rise in salaries as the local government had taken measures to increase employment opportunities for relocated residents, according to the announcement.

Software defined server without Microsoft: HP Moonshot

A simple and flexible payment structure can help you access the latest technology on your terms.

20/20 Team: Where is HP today in terms of helping everyone become a data scientist?

20/20 Team: And how is HP Labs helping shape where we are going?

20/20 Team: What’s the answer to that?

…

About John Sontag:

Sontag received a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

1. Software-defined everything

4. Storage

There is going to be a lot of talk about server-class ARM processors this week, particularly with ARM Holdings hosting its TechCon conference in Santa Clara.

A month ago, EnterpriseTech told you about the “Midway” chip that Calxeda had in the works and as well as its roadmap to get beefier 64-bit cores and extend its Fleet Services fabric to allow for more than 100,000 nodes to be linked together.

Looking ahead, Calxeda is adding a new processor to its roadmap, code-named “Sarita.” Here’s what the latest system-on-chip roadmap looks like now:

The future “Lago” chip is the first 64-bit chip that will come out of Calxeda, and it is based on the Cortex-A57 design from ARM Holdings –one of several ARMv8 designs, in fact. (The existing Calxeda chips are based on the ARMv7 architecture.)

Not Just Compute, But Networking, Too

The “Navarro” kicker to the Ratamosa chip is presumably based on the ARMv9 architecture, and Calxeda is not saying anything about when we might see that and what properties it might have. All that it has said thus far is that it is aimed at the “enterprise server era.”

Simplified development with complete tools and support

Availability and pricing

TI’s 66AK2Hx SoCs are currently available for sampling, with broader device availability in 1Q13 and EVM availability in 2Q13. AM5K2Ex and 66AK2Ex samples and EVMs will be available in the second half of 2013. Pricing for these devices will start at $49 for 1 KU.

More Literature:

Combination of DSP + ARM® cores and high-speed peripherals offer developers an optimal compute solution at low power consumption

Meet TI’s new 10Gbps Ethernet DSP + ARM SoC

Ease development and debugging with TI’s tools and software

Complementary analog products to increase system performance

Availability and pricing

The original post (8 months ago):

This is an exciting time to be in the IT industry right now. For those of you who have been around for a while — as I have — there have been dramatic shifts that have changed how businesses operate.