DynamIQ – ARM’s next-gen chip design focuses on Artificial Intelligence and machine learning
ARM, the U.K.-based semiconductor design firm, has unveiled its next generation of processor designs, a new microarchitecture named DynamIQ. The new chip targeted at markets ranging from self-driving cars to AI.
The new design, DynamIQ, is an update to ARM’s existing Cortex-A offering. The latter made up almost 20 percent of all ARM-based chips in the first three-quarters of 2016, according to the company’s last available regulatory filing.
The technology like Artificial Intelligence need more performance, and ARM is preparing its processors to take on those emerging applications. ARM is adding more cores, instructions, and faster pipelines in smaller spaces to boost performance.
ARM claims this approach — DynamIQ technology — will boost AI performance 50 times compared with its current chips over the next three to five years. Every new ARM chip design will be based on this new DynamIQ technology architecture.
John Ronco, vice president of product marketing at ARM, said the first smartphones with the DynamIQ architecture will start showing up in the market sometime in early 2018.
ARM is well known for designing energy-efficient chips for power-constrained devices, such as mobile phones. More than 85 percent of the world’s most sophisticated smartphones include ARM-based chips.
The new DynamIQ technology can handle up to eight processor cores of varying size on a single chip in almost any configuration. That will give customers more flexibility than ARM’s existing designs, Nandan Nayampally, general manager of the company’s Compute Products Group, said.
Late last year, Intel unveiled a chip aimed specifically at AI applications. Google has also developed its own AI chip design, and several startups have announced rival offerings.
ARM was acquired by Japanese tech giant SoftBank last year for $32 billion. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son saw ARM as a key component in implementing his idiosyncratic vision around AI and the Internet of Things.
