Arm TechCon 2018 Keynote Live Blog (Starts at 1pm ET)

01:05PM EDT - We're here at the San Jose Convention Center for Arm's annual developer conference and tech showcase, TechCon. Arm of course needs no introduction, and while the company is an IP provider rather than a hardware manufacturer, the net result is that they have their finger in everything from servers to embedded devices. Which has presented the company with a lot of growth opportunities, but also no shortage of competition as everyone works to grab a piece of these markets.

01:06PM EDT - The plan is for 3 mini-keynotes this morning. Starting with a keynote called The Fifth Wave of Computing

01:07PM EDT - Presented of course by Arm CEO Simon Segars

01:07PM EDT - Simon is starting us off with a history lesson of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace

01:10PM EDT - Babbage & Lovelace never saw the results of their efforts, but it did kick off a computing industry

01:10PM EDT - Mainframe to PCs to mobile & beyond. What comes next is the fifth wave

01:11PM EDT - The data-driven computing era

01:11PM EDT - Where there is a computer in every thing

01:12PM EDT - It's also no longer about the performance of a single system, but about the collective performance of all systems

01:14PM EDT - Now talking about a use case of micro-financing, and the kind of security required

01:15PM EDT - Getting to the fifth wave will not be without challenges though. If it's about network computing, then you need a reliable network that can handle many devices

01:15PM EDT - Enter 5G

01:16PM EDT - 5G will be faster, of course. But it will also handle large numbers of devices a lot better

01:17PM EDT - And what are the business opportunies that might arise from having such a capable network?

01:18PM EDT - Citing what's already been done with 2/3/4G, from American Idol to Netflix to Uber

01:18PM EDT - "5G is going to unleash creativity and opportunity for a lot of people"

01:19PM EDT - Arm wants to get to 1 trillion connected devices

01:20PM EDT - (This would be over 100 deivces/person)

01:20PM EDT - And these connected devices will need to be intelligent

01:24PM EDT - Now discussing a use case: pairing with a UK Children's Hospital to use smart edge devices to better control access and notify staff if someone is there who shouldn't be

01:26PM EDT - Next use case: cars

01:26PM EDT - Autonomous cars will be data centers on wheels. Generating many TBs per hour of data

01:27PM EDT - This is too much to upload elsewhere. It has to be processed at the edge, in the car

01:28PM EDT - (The slide transitions are at 60fps. nice!)

01:29PM EDT - Meanwhile servers/the cloud have to evolve as well

01:29PM EDT - Efficient. Low cost. Distributed.

01:30PM EDT - We're still very early in the days of IoT. But Arm thinks it will evolve quickly

01:30PM EDT - "What about security?"

01:31PM EDT - The tech sector needs to be trusted

01:32PM EDT - Talking about everyone's favorite exploits: Spectre and Meltdown

01:33PM EDT - Arm sees it as part of their mission to get everyone involved in making security better

01:34PM EDT - This is a challenge. How do you get skeptical devs on board? How do you communicate this to consumers and get them to pay for it?

01:36PM EDT - It will take collaboration and a complete ecosystem to make the Fifth Wave happen

01:38PM EDT - On to the next section, delivered by Marcelo Claure, COO of Softbank

01:39PM EDT - Talking about the growth of the IoT market

01:41PM EDT - 86% of IoT today is used to adhere to regulations or reduce costs

01:41PM EDT - So only 14% is being used to grow revenues

01:41PM EDT - But SoftBank expects IoT to start becoming disruptive

01:43PM EDT - Now rolling a video of a self-driving car on the streets of San Francisco

01:45PM EDT - Comparing and contrasting reactive vs. disruptive IoT

01:45PM EDT - Smart power meters versus smart thermometers, etc

01:46PM EDT - Home security systems with cameras and facial recognition

01:48PM EDT - SoftBank of course is also merging T-Mobile with Sprint. So they also have a hand in making the underlying 5G network for IoT a reality

01:48PM EDT - Planning to invest 40B dollars in the next few years on their 5G network

01:49PM EDT - Now on to SoftBank's vision for AI

01:51PM EDT - (This is all very high level/conceptual)

01:51PM EDT - SoftBank expects an AI revolution, and that it will occur much faster than any prior revolution

01:52PM EDT - And machines will have more processing capabilities than humans

01:54PM EDT - Now going into a hypothetical future day about how various SoftBank companies are using AI, and how it's helping to meet consumer needs

01:55PM EDT - Uber user load predictions, facial recognition to help with medical diagnosis, etc

01:58PM EDT - IoT is going to make life better for dogs as well

02:02PM EDT - (SoftBank's vision is very ambitious. Though this is starting to veer into an investment pitch)

02:03PM EDT - Ultimately everything SoftBank wants to do will require the IoT hardware to power it, and that is where Arm comes in

02:04PM EDT - And now on to part 3. Drew Henry, Arm's SVP & GM of their infrastructure business

02:05PM EDT - "Preparing the Cloud for the Fifth Wave of Computing"

02:05PM EDT - How will Arm evolve the cloud to support SoftBank's vision?

02:06PM EDT - Arm believes they have a unique understanding of what all of this will require, due to their current businesses and customers

02:07PM EDT - Starting with imaging sensors

02:08PM EDT - 1B HD image sensors will generate an enormous amount of data

02:09PM EDT - All of this would also require more than 40M servers. More than exist today

02:11PM EDT - Comparing the number of wafers used for various processor architectures

02:11PM EDT - "Other" in this case is x86

02:12PM EDT - Arm, for obvious reasons, sees themselves as a leader

02:13PM EDT - Arm is probably better known here for smartphones and other consumer devices. But they are also a major player in the infrastructure market. And proud of it

02:16PM EDT - The compute and networking model is changing. It's no longer about sending content to client devices, but having data come in from the world and in to the servers

02:19PM EDT - Arm believes that datacenters are spending too many CPU cycles - and thus money - on networking operations

02:20PM EDT - Arm of course has a solution, with their Cosmos hardware

02:21PM EDT - Arm doing the network processing. Arm doing the storage processing

02:21PM EDT - Arm is announcing a new initiative: Neoverse

02:22PM EDT - Cloud-to-edge infrastructure technologies

02:24PM EDT - Cosmos, Ares, Zeus, Poseidon

02:24PM EDT - All built on leading-edge nodes

02:24PM EDT - 30% per generation perf improvement

02:25PM EDT - And Arm being an IP provider, it will be up to partners to put this together and figure out what products the market needs

02:27PM EDT - Already putting together an ecosystem of silicon and service providers

02:28PM EDT - And of course, software support from all the usual suspects

02:30PM EDT - Neoverse for infrastructure, Cortex for edge devices

02:32PM EDT - Now talking about conference sessions over the next few days and how participants can get involved in Neoverse

02:32PM EDT - And that's a wrap. Thanks for joining us.