Mobile World Congress 2015: A Year of Great Handsets and Performance Gains

It's Darcy Lauve reporting live here from Mobile World Congress 2015, and I'm delighted to be at the Arm booth again with a favorite of mine, Mr. James Bruce, who is the director of mobile at Arm. How are you today, sir? I'm very well and it's great to speak with you again, Dar. Thank you very much for your time, sir.

So we've seen a lot of great things here at Mobile World Congress this year, including 14nm designs from Exos and the Galaxy S6, as well as many other exciting stuff. Mr. Bruce, what are some of the highlights of this year's show? You've had a chance to see all the latest handsets and technologies, what stands out to you?

Mr. Bruce: Well, Darcy, I think one of the biggest highlights is the performance gains that we're seeing in these devices. The 14nm designs from Exos are allowing for significant power reductions while maintaining or even increasing performance, which is a major step forward for mobile devices.

Enlighten, announced yesterday, is another exciting technology that's being showcased here at MWC. What can you tell us about this new lighting technology?

Mr. Bruce: Enlighten is a new technology that allows for more efficient use of lighting in devices. It uses advanced LED lighting to create more accurate and consistent color reproduction, which is particularly useful for gaming and other applications where image quality is critical.

When it comes to gaming on smartphones, we're seeing some significant advancements this year. What can you tell us about the state of mobile gaming at MWC?

Mr. Bruce: Mobile gaming is really taking off right now, and we're seeing some amazing new technologies that are allowing for more realistic graphics and gameplay. Low power DDR4 RAM, which is being used in devices like the Galaxy S6, is also playing a major role in enabling these advancements.

We've had the opportunity to speak with Micron about their work on low power DDR4 RAM, and they're packing a lot of performance into this technology. How do you see this technology changing the way we experience mobile gaming?

Mr. Bruce: Low power DDR4 RAM is vital for delivering that user experience, particularly in games where memory bandwidth is critical. It's allowing us to transfer data to these compute units more efficiently, which means better performance and more realistic graphics.

As we look to the future of mobile devices, what can you tell us about the design trends that we might see? Will we be seeing more big little designs, or are there other exciting technologies on the horizon?

Mr. Bruce: I think 2015 is really the year of the big little design. We've seen some amazing advancements in this area, with devices like the Exos 14nm designs allowing for significant power reductions while maintaining performance. But I also believe that we're going to see more innovation and competition between our partners, which will drive us forward.

One thing that's really exciting about Arm is the ecosystem that we've built around mobile technology. We're working closely with developers and OEMs to provide them with the resources they need to grow and innovate. Can you tell us a bit more about what this means for the future of mobile devices?

Mr. Bruce: Well, Darcy, I think it's really all about empowering our partners to create amazing new technologies. We supply important IP, but it's really up to them to come out with the cool stuff that people don't even realize is possible. And that's what makes it so exciting to work for Arm – we get to see the results of their hard work and innovation two years down the line.

Finally, before we wrap up, I wanted to ask you a bit about the future of wearables. How do you see this technology evolving over the next year or so?

Mr. Bruce: Wearables are really growing right now, and we're expecting to see them double or triple in size by the time we have our next conversation. This is an exciting area for us at Arm, as it allows us to apply our expertise in mobile technology to new and innovative applications.

Thanks again to Mr. James Bruce for his time today – it's always a pleasure speaking with him, and I'm sure we'll be hearing from him again next year at MWC 2016.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enit's Darcy lauve reporting live here from Mobile World Congress 2015 and I'm delighted to be at the arm Booth again with a favorite of mine Mr James Bruce who is the director of mobile at arm how are you today sir I'm very well and it's great to speak you again Dar thank you very much for your time sir so we've seen a lot of great things here at Mobile World Congress uh 14 nmoc from exos and the Galaxy S6 and a lot of other exciting stuff what are you what are you most impressed with at the show so far oh that's actually a really tough question and I think the sort of answer to that is you know no matter what price point you're at there's been some great handsets I mean obviously the Galaxy S6 with the 14 nanometer R so is very impressive at the premium and then you can go all the way down to some of the handsets that we've got that we're showing like a $30 spread triom handset with a quad A7 or a $65 uh quad a53 LT handset with Mary t7 20 so I think that's the really important message from mwc now is you know no matter what price point you're buying your handset at you do have some great choices great performance and you know it's a great time to uh buy a smartphone I couldn't agree more so just taking a look back you know we spoke uh last year at Mobile World Congress you know it was a Galaxy S5 which was debuted around that time what kind of performance gains are we looking at towards the upper tier of the market Upper end of the market year-over year you think so I mean it's always a sort of um difficult one to answer directly but I mean certainly the performance gains are over 40% uh year onye some years it can actually be almost uh doubling some years it perhaps is only 20 or 30% but I think the really important thing to emphasize is when you're looking at the handsets it's not just about performance it's about the overall user experience so if you have the sort of Galaxy S5 and the Galaxy S s in your hand it's completely different and what I mean by that is just the changes in the mechanics the uh quality of the display and also the camera I mean you've suddenly gone from a sensor that wasn't optically image stabilized to a sensor that is so it's all those changes combined that deliver that new user experience to the consumer you know it's really interesting that you say that now I take a look back you know the part the arm partner ecosystem is so vast and it continues to grow you know all the way from chip all the way to Qualcomm you know exos we have the rise of high silicon of Huawei and even eldri now is participating Inc architecture can you just talk a little bit about uh about that yeah so I think what you're seeing is we have lots of Partners um in the Army ecosystem and in the mobile space we have a great range of companies and I think it's really important from the perspective of the consumer because if you just have one chip supplier you know all the handsets are really just going to be variations on the theme when you've got all these different companies competing against each other trying to do things different that's when you get the diversity in smartphones those differences and that's where it's great to be a consumer absolutely so we're quite familiar you know with our reference designs you know your leadership with an IP itself but can you just talk a little bit about the GPU space because we were just over with imagination and obviously Apple licenses their GPU architecture uh and now the rise of myips which is supported by Android 5.0 Lollipop and Beyond um but if you could just talk a little bit about uh arms Mali GPU architecture relative to power VR of imagination uh and you know Visa the future as well so I think the important thing is really to sort of just talk about you know the various Mary device hoods that we've seen at the show and I think it's really impressive now that uh Marley is now the number one licensed uh gpip uh it shipped over a billion units and I think there's some great devices you're seeing sort of t720 at sort of $65 uh t760 based devices starting at 300 and I'm sure as she's talked about the some premium devices using the Marley t760 and I think certainly from the perspective of the actual use of these phones I think the important thing is really to look at the capabilities of the GPU and certainly as an Android User what I'm excited about is as Android 3.0 sorry as open glaz 3. 0 3.1 comes into the market how the games developers take advantage of that and also you you're seeing sort of supporting Technologies for example we had the Enlighten announcement yesterday um with the new lighting technology having that great um and just using the term I candy you know that big change in your gaming capabilities and the handset I think it's going to be a really interesting year to be a gamer on the smartphone uh so I mean we continue to see massive performance gains you know the utility and the performance of these devices at all ends of the pricing Spectrum are just continuing to improve how close do you think we are to achieving truly desktop like performance in a mobile device having the one device that can be the primary and they all so I mean obviously if you're uh let's say professional designer or if you're using AutoCAD then you're still going to use I I'll give that to desktops but I mean as a typical consumer or is that someone who's you know really just someone who uses office on their desktop laptop I think we're almost at that point now and I think it's going to be really interesting to see over the next couple of years how the form factors and the connectivity changes to take advantage of that increase in performance on your smartphone MH well another exciting corer to that is uh the launch of ddr4 ram in a mobile device you know industry first the Galaxy S6 is bringing and we spoke with Micron and it looks like they're packing a lot more performance finally yeah absolutely and I mean low power ddr4 is vital for delivering that uh user experience and I think it's it's very good that you brought that up because quite often when you talk about um smartphone performance you talk about things like CPU clock speeds GPU but you really do need that memory subsystem to actually transfer the data to these compute units and low power ddr4 is that next stage interesting so we're going to be speaking again next year oh um but just so perhaps we could have a little bit of a look into the future are we going to be seeing more versions of uh the big little uh type design or are is there anything exciting that arm is working on that you could shed some light on for the future well I mean obviously uh big little is going to progress I I really look at 2015 as a year of the big little um you've obviously got these octar 53s where they're effectively doing two clusters one running very fast one running very efficiently and I think um we've obviously announced cortex a72 but if I was to give it to you in one sound bind I think it's more of the same but better you're going to see that continuous innovation that's between our partners and also that should we say friendly competition that drives them to do better and that that's a nice thing I come I'll come to mwc 2016 and there'll be lots of new handsets that I'll be really excited about and that's the great thing about the sort of smartphone business is that every year you come to the show and you're always excited truly well I mean there's not a lot that we can just C more obviously the rise of embed you know armor still continued to work with a lot of developers and opening up the ecosystem providing the resources so that people can you know really grow mobile technology and with the rise of wearables even though it's still a relatively small product category now probably double or triple in size by the time we have a conversation next year and that's the great thing about the arm ecosystem if you actually look at arm what we do is we we're actually quite boring we Supply important IP and it's our silicon partners and oems who actually come out with this cool new stuff that sometimes you just don't even think about and that's why it's so exciting to work for arm because you know two years down the line you see stuff again wow I never even thought about it trly yeah well I want to say a huge thank you for your time it's always a privilege and honor to be able to speak with you James so and it's it's always great speaking to you Dar thanks so much all right start laav reporting live here from mwc 2015 signing off\n"