The State of the Future:

ARM’s Perspective
Emre Ozer
ARM R&D, Cambridge

Nov 16, 2009

1
ARM
  IP Company
  Processor IP
  Physical IP
  Fabric and Peripheral IP look at the power characteristics

  Development Tools of A-class ARM

  Processor Family
  M-Class (Ultra-low power and very low-power)
  Microcontrollers
  R-Class (Real-time and embedded processors)
  Automotive, control, critical-safety, military and space
  A-Class (Application processors)
  Mobile, Smartphone, Consumer Electronics, Netbooks and
Servers

2
Current R&D Activities
  Process, Voltage and Temperature Variations
  Project: Razor- Energy-efficient adaptive processor aiming at
Technology and Environment variations and fault tolerance
  Custom Processors
  Project: Reconfigurable Array and Fabric – Tool design for
application-specific custom processor
  System-level Performance and Power Modelling
  Project: Accurate Modelling of SoC – Detailed models of memory
controllers and system power
  Memory Bandwidth
  Project: EuroCloud - 3D DRAM on Logic
  Cloud Computing and low-power Servers
  Project: EuroCloud – Low-power server using multi-core Cortex A9
for Mobile Cloud apps

3
Challenges
1.P
  rocess Variations, Reliability and
Fault Tolerance
2.P
  ower – Dark Silicon Problem
3.M  emory Wall
4.S   calability
5.C   loud Computing

4
Challenge 1: Variations, Reliability and Fault Tolerance
  Variations
  Process, voltage, temperature and dynamic
  From die to die, wafer to wafer
  Yield is a concern
  Soft errors
  Single-event transients, Single event upsets, Single-event latchups
and etc.
  Hard errors
  Aging, wear-out, NBTI and etc.
  Reliable Execution
  Hardware and software solutions required
  Fault tolerance techniques
  Beyond 22nm, operating requirements for safety-critical and space
applications may also be true for general-purpose apps

5
Challenge 2: Power – Dark Silicon Problem
Node 45nm 22nm 11nm

Year 2008 2014 2020

Area 1 ~1/4 ~1/16

Peak freq 1 1.6 2.4

Power
@ 45nm freq 1 0.6 0.3
@ peak freq 1 1 0.6

Exploitable Si
(equivalent Power)

24% 10%

6
Challenge 2: Power – Dark Silicon Problem
How to fill the Dark Silicon
 On-chip memory (cache, DRAM or other)
 Turn off when not used
 Hardware accelerators (Video, audio,
encryption and etc)
 Only activate the required accelerators

7
Challenge 3: Memory Wall
DRAM Bandwidth & Latency cannot keep up with the
computational demands
  Get worse with increasing number of many cores
  Solution to Bandwidth
  3D DRAM Integration
3D Integration

  Solution to Latency
  Alternative Memory technologies
  Phase-change RAM, MRAM and etc

8
Challenge 4: Scalability
  Future is homogeneous many cores. Good! but
  Performance Scalability
  Programming and Tools
  Interconnection network
  Power Scalability
  May not power all the cores at the same time!
  Heterogeneous many cores or many accelerators could be
more power-scalable option in the future – Corollary to the
Dark Silicon Problem

9
Challenge 5: Cloud Computing

The cloud will define the software platform

The client will be a server (and vice versa)

10
 EuroCloud Roadmap = Deliverable
= Vision

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

1Q 2Q 3Q 4Q 1Q 2Q 3Q 4Q 1Q 2Q 3Q 4Q

ARM Non-coherent
server-on-chip
Comparison
of standard
3D DRAM
controller
Off-chip
NIC
Server PM
design +
Standard
vs. EuroCloud
arch report vs. EuroCloud Heterogeneous server
design design
servers report node arch report demonstration

IMEC Early physical

proto
TSV or
interposer
Thermal
proto
Cost/yield
analysis
specification proto analysis

NOKIA Ovi server Ovi server load 1st Cloud app Cloud app Cloud app Green Nokia
instrumentation analysis report demo ready ready for trial report data center
setup public trials goes online ?

EuroCloud
Server apps
and x86 server server boards EuroCloud
comparison
report
ready Commercial
EuroCloud
Commercial servers in
outsourced EuroCloud volume
Cloud arch and Server HW design start ? server production ?
runtime proto acceleration
prototypes ?
created report

EPFL Multi-Linux
non-coherent
Scalable
caches and
interconnects
Race-free/lock-free
memory ordering
server system report
report report

UCY Faults/errors
Reliability of
cores/clusters
Reliability of
caches/DRAM
Reliability of
3D interconnect
analysis report report report report

Other ARM next

gen CPU
ARM next
gen CPU
ARM next
gen CPU
Related release 1 ? release 2 ? release 3 ?
Elpida 1GB
Speculation TSV DRAM Wide DRAM Wide DRAM Wide DRAM
in volume
in volumes proto chips ? standard ?
production ?s

Nokia Nokia Nokia

80M users ? 300M users 800M users?

11
Main Topics EC could focus on
  Dark silicon problem
  On-chip memory, HW accelerators, perhaps new battery technologies
  Custom accelerators
  Tools and novel HW structures (e.g. reconfigurable fabric and arrays)
  Reliability and Fault tolerance
  Beyond 22nm
  Memory Technologies
  3D integration, novel memory elements and etc.
  Cloud computing – HW and SW
  Low-power servers in the Data Centres
  Mobile devices are also Cloud servers
  Cloud Standardization
  Virtualization
12
EC could encourage
  Physical prototype development rather than virtual prototypes:
  FPGAs and even ASICs
  To understand the variation effects beyond 22nm
  Unfortunately, not having a “Euro foundry” is a concern for both researchers and
industry
  There is ST, NXP and Infineon but …
  GlobalFoundries could be alternative Euro fab (e.g. Dresden fab)
  Addressing the Dark silicon problem
  Heterogeneity, custom accelerators, on-chip memory and etc.
  Memory Technologies
  Almost no European memory vendor
  In the short term, the focus should be on 3D DRAM Integration
  Cloud Computing converges with Embedded Computing
  Embedded systems will become future “Cloud client” and “Cloud server”
  SW, Virtualization, Infrastructure Standardization

13
Industry’s View on EC Projects
  In the industry, the general view on EC projects is that they
are not very successful.
  Underlying reasons:
  Too many partners in the consortia
  In ARM, we believe that STREP like (3-to-5 partner) projects are
more agile and successful than the IP projects
  Due to previous experiences, ARM avoids participating IP-type
projects
  Most of the projects led by the academia with academic agenda
pushes away the industrial participation
  No real product comes after the project ends

14
What could the EC do better?
  EC could encourage the industry-led proposals
  e.g. a separate scheme like STREP but the leadership must be from
the industry
  With a separate budget of “real prototypes” (e.g. testchips, test
boards, evaluation boards and etc)
  In general, the “real prototype” budget could be from 100KEuros to
a couple of MEuros depending on the prototype with 100% EC
contribution
  Total project budget 4-6M Euro (EC contribution) for 2 or 3 years
looks reasonable
  EC could also encourage small-partner projects without
restrictions:
  e.g. no “minimum 3 partners from 3 different countries” condition
  Do we have statistics on the success rate of 18-20 partner IP
projects?

15
 THE END

16