Introducing new Arm roadmap guarantee and other Arm IoT initiatives for accelerating endpoint AI

Cambridge [United Kingdom], November 19 (ANI/BusinessWire India): While the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution may still be in its early days, there is already one undeniable similarity to the smartphone revolution - the Arm ecosystem is the driving force behind both.
Arm is in a unique position to drive the innovation and adoption of IoT everywhere, and here are three numbers that highlight why it is unique - 70, 100, and 180. Arm technology touches 70 per cent of the world's population, thanks to its partners having shipped 180 billion Arm-based chips since Arm was founded 30 years ago. And of those 180 billion chips, more than 100 billion have shipped in just the past five years alone.
Arm's technology is the foundation upon which diverse, innovative, and life-changing applications are built, from smart healthcare to remote monitoring, from industrial robotics to the connected home.


It's expected that endpoint AI (IoT endpoint devices locally processing data into actionable insights) will accelerate the value generated from IoT and drive adoption. To do this at a cost point and power budget that enables mass deployment of efficient and intelligent endpoint AI, earlier this year Arm introduced the industry's first microNPU, the Ethos-U55, and the Cortex-M55 microcontroller. And most recently, Arm announced the Ethos-U65, which brings the same capability to higher performance points and extends microNPU applicability to Cortex-A based systems.
To help further accelerate endpoint AI deployments, the Flexible Access portfolio has been expanded to include both Cortex-M55 and Ethos-U55, giving Flexible Access partners the freedom to explore, experiment and design with these products without any up-front license costs.


Since the launch of Flexible Access in summer 2019, more than 100 innovative companies, from startups, to ASIC houses to established semiconductor companies, have signed on. More than half of these are first-time Arm silicon partners.
As more partners continue to sign on, Arm is evolving the program to ensure they have the confidence to develop the long-term roadmaps their IoT solutions will require by introducing the Roadmap Guarantee for Flexible Access. The Roadmap Guarantee ensures:
* Arm will continue to offer the CPUs included in the Flexible Access portfolio for five years.
* A commitment that Arm will add future Cortex-M and Ethos-U products to Flexible Access shortly after they come to market.


The updates to Flexible Access give silicon partners greater access to Arm endpoint AI IP, but also benefit the software developer ecosystem. Arm is committed to making the software development experience on Arm as seamless and simple as possible.
The service-orientated architecture of the cloud native datacenter is colliding with the weird, wonderful, and diverse hardware that makes up embedded edge and endpoint devices. Working with the ecosystem, Arm is focused on ensuring all of the varied and evolving workloads are portable, maintainable, and easily deployed across devices and operating systems while seamlessly connecting to any cloud service.
This is why efforts like Project Cassini, an open, standards-based initiative to deliver a cloud-native software experience across a secure Arm edge ecosystem are critical. As well as expanding Arm's collaborations with partners like Microsoft to deliver a unified and streamlined AI experience for developers to deploy a common, integrated Azure-based toolchain targeting Arm-based silicon.
While Arm continues to invest in IoT developer enablement, the amount of work already underway by its silicon partner ecosystem is extraordinary. For example, Renesas recently announced they are expanding microcontroller (based on Cortex-M) support for Google's TensorFlow lite to enable tinyML powered solutions for applications such as motor control and predictive maintenance for smart homes and industrial automation.


Arm technology enabled a smartphone revolution that changed the way people used technology forever, but people need IoT to make their lives better across everything they do. Arm continues to set a high bar with smartphone innovation, but for IoT innovation and its unlimited potential to change lives, there really is no high bar or ceiling for what the Arm ecosystem can achieve together.
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