Hi and welcome to the Arm "What is" program series. In each episode, we explore a tech
topic to give you insight and perspective in the some of today's hottest design trends.
I'm Brian Fuller, editor-in-chief at Arm and today we're going to find out, what is total compute?
And to help us with that, I want to introduce Kinjal Dave, director solution management with
Arm's client line of business. When he's not helping us understand what is total compute,
he's busy shaping future compute solutions for diverse client markets.
And also in his spare time, he likes to tinker with his microbit and raspberry PI systems.
So let's get started. So Kinjal, what exactly is total compute?
So total compute is Arm's strategy to enable purpose-built system design and
drive the innovation for the next decade of computer platforms. It's
based on three pillars or foundations: performance, security, and developer access.
Now in essence, the aim of total compute approach is really to enable Arm's partners to build
specialized compute platforms with diverse levels of performance, efficiency, and scalability,
targeting multiple consumer device markets. Now it is worth mentioning
that the solutions based on total compute strategy are also referred to as total compute solutions.
So Kinjal when you talk about total compute, are you referring to just
hardware design or software development as well?
So these are complex multidimensional problems that cannot be resolved by optimizing different
IP components, like the CPU or GPU in isolation. The total compute approach
tackles this multidimensional problem by co-designing and co-optimizing the
compute solutions across the broad range of components that includes Arm's hardware IP,
software, physical IP, tools, as well as standards.
So total compute is relatively new phrase in electronics design.
Why is this approach caught on recently?
Yes, good question. So, as I said before, like total compute is primarily driven by
the need to address three key challenges facing the next decade of compute platforms.
The first one is really to do with performance for a whole range of use cases.
Now these performance demands are really skyrocketing, but there are constraints on
cost and power and these are not going away. Second, robot security is becoming a norm, but
there are massive hurdles on cost, performance, and fragmentation across the ecosystem.
And finally, developers require the ease of debugging, deploying,
and optimizing their apps across a broad range of client devices. So the total compute approach is
intended to address these challenges, you know, holistic manner and hence the recent interest.
So Kinjal, you mentioned these three principles of total compute: compute performance,
security, developer access. Given the comprehensive nature of total compute,
are designers compromising on any one of those principles?
Not really, it's quite the opposite. So as I mentioned earlier, the fundamental idea behind
all compute strategy is relying on a very holistic cross IP system wide optimization approach that
will make it easy for designers to build purposeful compute platforms that are
optimized for the use cases that their market segment care about and at the right cost points.
So Kinjal, how do you see total compute solutions evolving in say the next two to three years?
Well, we are just in the dawn of the next decade of evolution for Arm's compute platforms.
In May this year, we announced Arm's first generation of total compute solutions
that were based on the Arm v9 architecture. And then the next few years, the total
compute solutions will aim to deliver leading industry performance across the broad range
of use cases and able developers to utilize this performance across different associate platforms
while continuing to strengthen the security foundations or Arm's compute platforms.
Well, thanks Kinjal. In just a few minutes, you've illuminated an amazingly holistic approach
to system design. Now check out all our other "What is"episodes here and be sure to subscribe
to this channel because we'll be adding more as the year progresses. Thanks for listening!