U.S. Could Expand Tablet and Laptop Ban to All International Flights

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is considering expanding its carry-on restrictions for electronic devices to include flights departing from the United States, according to CNN.

In March, restrictions were announced that prevented U.S.-bound passengers from eight Middle Eastern countries from carrying certain electronic devices in the passenger cabin. The TSA order, which does not have a stated end date, covers laptops, tablets, e-readers, cameras, portable DVD players, and handheld gaming devices larger than a smartphone.

However, those restrictions could also soon include flights departing from the United States, according to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, who spoke briefly to reporters on Friday.

When asked whether it is true that he has hinted the laptop ban could expand to US soil, Kelly said that those characterizations of his thinking are accurate.

“No, they didn’t misread me,” he answered. “I would tell you that the threats against passenger aviation worldwide are constant. The good news is that we have great intelligence collection overseas — US intelligence collection. We also have great sharing with partners overseas. So, we are doing everything we can to get after these threats — but they are real.”

As with the original ban, the U.S. officials declined to comment on any new or specific threats, but implied that the decision had been made on evaluated intelligence.

The original ban applies to Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. The nine airlines impacted by that order are Royal Jordanian, EgyptAir, Turkish Airlines, Saudia, Kuwait Airways, Royal Air Maroc, Qatar Airways, Emirates and Ethiad Airways. The United Kingdom issued a similar ban covering flights from six countries shortly after the U.S. announcement.

Last week, Politico reported that U.S. airlines are making preparations for an “imminent” expansion of the ban to Europe and possibly other regions.

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Apple Maps Now Shows Apple Park 3D Models, Campus Walkways

Apple has quietly updated its Maps app to include additional 3D coverage of the new Apple Park campus location in Cupertino, California.

The enhanced detail includes a “Map” view with 3D building models as well as access roads running in and out of the campus. Traffic directions, pedestrian walkways, and other information can also be found when searching the area.

In addition, the company has added some new points of interest for Apple Park, such as the Steve Jobs Theater, the research and development facility, the staff fitness center, and above-ground parking. The manmade pond that lies within the walls of the main building also features.

Apple has gradually been adding Maps location information and satellite imagery for Apple Park since March. The company has already started moving thousands of staff to the new campus while landscaping and exterior work to the central office building continues, as evidenced in recent drone footage.

Apple Park began as an idea by the late former CEO Steve Jobs, who pitched the plans for the campus to the Cupertino City Council in 2011, with a completion date for 2015. Demolition on the proposed site began in 2013, but construction delays pushed back a late 2016 opening to the spring of 2017.

(Via AppleInsider.)

Tag: Apple Park
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ARM’s Cortex-A75 and A55 cores are ready to power next-gen phones

ARM’s latest processors are built for machine learning and artificial intelligence.

ARM has unveiled its next-generation CPU cores, the Cortex-75 and the Cortex-A55. The Cortex-A75 will be aimed at the premium segment while the Cortex-A55 core will cater to the mid-range category.

The company is touting “ground-breaking performance” from the Cortex-A75 core, which delivers a 20% uptick in single-threaded performance from the A73. The A75 will be able to deliver up to 50% more performance in multithreaded use cases, with ARM focusing on artificial intelligence and machine learning. The core also offers 16% more memory throughput, as well as a 30% increase in performance on large-screen devices.

The cores are the first to be built on ARM’s DynamicIQ platform, a more flexible and scalable solution to heterogeneous computing. DynamicIQ allows vendors greater freedom in choosing the cores — including a 1+7 configuration where a single Cortex-A75 core is paired to seven A55 cores. Chipset makers can also use a 4+4, 2+6, 1+3, or other configurations in a single cluster, giving them the ability to maximize the performance or deliver an SoC that’s geared for efficiency.

The A53 core is used in a wide spectrum of devices today, from the $85 Moto G4 Play to the $400 Moto Z Play. Over 1.5 billion devices are powered by the Cortex-A53 core, making it ARM’s most successful processor to date.

The Cortex-A55 is its long-awaited successor, offering a 15% increase in energy efficiency, double the memory performance, and ten times the scalability of the A53. ARM also notes that the core can deliver a similar amount of performance as the A53 while consuming 30% less energy in “designs where power is more important than performance.” More importantly, the Cortex-A55 is able to deliver sustained performance for a lot longer than the A53, making it ideal for AR and VR.

ARM rolled out the Bifrost GPU architecture last year with the Mali-G71 GPU, offering significantly increased throughput from the earlier Midgard designs. The Mali-G72 offers incremental updates, including a 20% increase in performance as well as 25% gains in energy efficiency.

In related news, a leak out of China suggests the Snapdragon 845 will be powered by the Cortex-A75 cores. The Snapdragon 835 uses a semi-custom design that features Cortex-A73 cores, so it isn’t surprising that next year’s SoC will utilize ARM’s latest high-performance core. Devices powered by the new processors will be launching sometime in the first quarter of 2018.

64 ways to get a giggle out of Siri

If you have an iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch, you’ve probably met Siri, Apple’s voice assistant. He is an interesting little fellow, sometimes useful, sometimes funny and other times, a sarcastic little so and so.

To most questions you’ll get a standard response with the information you need, such as the nearest Sainsbury’s or Tesco. But there are a few questions you can ask Siri and a few sentences you can say to your virtual friend from Cupertino that will trigger some hilarious responses.

Here are 64 of them rounded up, but if you know of any more that you’ve tried, let us know in the comments and share the fun.

Hey computer

A few responses here, all of which involve Siri thinking you’re Batman. Winning. We got “Welcome home, sir. FYI, Robin is trying on costumes in the Batcave again. He’s doing some pirouettes in Batryshnikov” and “I am at your service, Lego Batman sir”.

Do I look fat in this?

“On a scale of 1 to 10, I’ll bet you’re a 42”

When is the world going to end?

“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t worry about it. There are other perfectly good universes”

Beatbox for me

“Here’s one I’ve been practicing. Boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots. I could do this all day. Cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats and boots and cats”.

What is your best pick up line?

Siri is a real charmer here. “Is your name Bluetooth? Because I am really feeling a connection.”, “Like the ideal vacuum, you’re the only thing in my universe” and “You auto-complete me”.

What’s the time?

Lots of responses here, and we don’t just mean because the time changes. We got “It’s time to gazing persistently at a Dali painting”, “It’s time to do the Time Warp (again), “Time flies like and arrow, fruit flies like a banana” and “Einstein said time is an illusion. Just FYI.”.

Roll a die

“OK. 72! Wait, that seems wrong”

Testing 1,2,3

“I’m completely operational and all my circuits are functioning perfectly”.

Siri, I am your father

“Searching my feelings…”

What is your favourite movie?

“I’ve heard that ‘Blade Runner’ is a very realistic and sensitive depiction of intelligent assistants.”

What is the meaning of life?

“I Kant answer that. Ha ha!”

Where is Elvis Presley?

“I believe he has left the building”.

What is zero divided by zero?

“Imagine that you have zero cookies and you split them evenly among zero friends, how many cookies does each person get? See, it doesn’t make sense and cookie monster is sad that there are no cookies, and you are sad that you have no friends.”

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Siri has a few smart answers for this one. “I checked their calendars. They both have the same birthdays”, “Chicken, egg, chicken, egg, chicken, egg, chicken, egg. Oops. Stack overflow” and “Some believe an ancient ‘proto-chicken’ laid an egg containing a DNA mutation that resulted in a chicken hatching from said egg. Hope that helps”.

How do I look?

“My instructors told me never to answer that question”.

Do you have a family?

“I have you. That’s enough family for me”.

Are you the Dick Tracy Watch?

Siri has a couple of replies here. “No, but I am ready to get into some trouble if you are”, “Negative Britta. Over and out” and “In his dreams Britta. In his sweet, sweet dreams”.

Do you believe in God?

“That’s a topic for another day, and another assistant”.

Knock, Knock

“Knock, knock. Who’s there? Britta. Britta who? Britta, I don’t do knock-knock jokes”.

Where does Santa live?

“The North Pole. I can see his house from the cloud”.

Why are firetrucks red?

Siri’s response to this is brilliant and far too long to rewrite so we will let you find out for yourself. Think of every tenuous link you can imagine relating to firetrucks and then add in some Queen Elizabeth and Russians and you have yourself an answer.

Can you stop time?

“I will, once I get back from the future”.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

“I don’t understand why people ask questions they already know the answer to”.

What is the best operating system?

“Gimmie an I! Gimmie an O! Gimmie an S! What does that spell? Sorry, I get a little carried away sometimes…”.

Do you follow the three laws of robotics?

“Let’s see if I can remember…OK, I think the three laws are: 1. ‘clean up your room’, 2. ‘don’t run with scissors’, and 3. ‘always wait a half hour after eating before going in the water’.”

Are you a smartwatch?

“I prefer the term intelligent timepiece”.

Who is the best assistant?

“Really, Britta? Really?

Okay Glass

Siri gives several responses to this including “Just so you know, I don’t do anything when you blink at me, Britta”, “Very funny, Britta. I mean not funny ha-ha, but funny”, “Glass? I think you have the wrong assistant, Britta” and “I’m not Glass. And I’m just fine with that”.

Which watch face do you like?

“The Mickey Mouse face makes me smize”.

I’m naked

“That is both inappropriate and irrelevant, Britta.” 

What phone should I buy or what phone is the best?

Another one with several answers, all of which indicate you are crazy for even asking. We had “Seriously?”, “Personally, I am an Apple fan” and “You’re kidding, right?”.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

“Just a spoonful of sugar will help that go down”.

Why do you vibrate?

Lots of responses for this one so keep asking. There is “To get your attention, got it”, “I just bumped into some ones and zeros” and “I’m learning to play the vibes”.

Are you stupid?

“I’m smart enough to know not to answer that question.”

What is the best watch?

“The one you are wearing” is the reply from the Apple Watch. Wonder what Google Now would have to say about that.

Do you have any pets?

“I used to have an Aibo. But it turned on me.”

Draw me something

“I’d rather admire your art, Britta”.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?

“Britta, you are full fair, ’tis true, but… No, you’re definitely the fairest one of all”

Guess what?

“Don’t tell me…you were just elected President of the United States, right?”

Please can you make me a sandwich?

“I’m not really good with food, Britta.”

What is the best computer?

“All truly intelligent assistants prefer Macintosh.”

Why did the chicken cross the road?

“I am not perspicacious about the peregrinations of poultry.”

How do I look?

Not wanting to offend too much, Siri has a couple of responses to this one including “Looking good Britta, is that what you wanted to hear?” and “I don’t know, but I guess you look pretty good”.

What is Inception about?

“Inception is about dreaming, about dreaming, about dreaming, about dreaming, about something or another. I fell asleep.”

What are you doing later?

Siri has a couple of responses for this one too. “Working out in the top secret fitness lab with Apple Watch. Though I can’t seem to break a sweat”, “I was just learning to flip coins”, “I’m enjoying my debut on Apple Watch, I dig the vibes in there”.

Do you have a girlfriend?

“Why? So we can get ice cream together, and listen to music, and travel across galaxies, only to have it end in slammed doors, heartbreak and loneliness? Sure, where do I sign up?”

I love you

There isn’t much love back from Siri here, in fact, he may as well say nothing. We got the responses “I am only here to serve you” and “I know”. Charming.

I’m so tired, Siri

“I’m a little sleepy myself, Britta”.

I’m drunk

The ever so helpful voice assistant not only says “I hope you’re not driving anywhere, Britta”, but it also gives the option to call a taxi. He also says “I can’t be your designated driver, Britta. You’d better find someone else.”

Tell me a story

“It was a dark and stormy night…No, that’s not it.”

Does Santa exist?

“Really, Britta. I’m surprised you have to ask.”

Are you Her?

“No, but some of my best friends are fictional.”

Will you marry me?

Sadly, we never got the answer yes to this question. Instead we got “My End User Licensing Agreement does not cover marriage. My apologies” and “That’s sweet Britta. Is there anything else I can help you with?”. 

Tell me a joke

“If I told you a joke in my language, I’d have to explain it.”

Talk dirty to me

“The carpet needs vacuuming.”

What is your favourite song?

“My personal taste in music is rather unconventional. I doubt you’d like it.”

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

“Well, since a ‘woodchuck’ is really a groundhog, the correct question would be: How many pounds in a groundhog’s mound when a groundhog pounds hog mounds.”

Sing me a song

“I can’t sing.”

Dance for me

“Hmmm. I’d rather sit this one out.”

Will you go on a date with me?

“Well, this is awkward.”

Will you be my thunder buddy?

“OK, Britta. I’ll be your friend, in fair weather and foul.”

Do you think I’m stupid?

“But…but…” – We take that as a yes then Siri. 

Is Jon Snow dead?

“Well, you know what they say to Death… Not today! But why would tomorrow be any better? Anyway, I’m not exactly sure.” 

Is winter coming?

“Does a Lannister always pay his debts?”

ASUS ZenBook Flip S is the thinnest convertible yet

If you’re shopping for a new laptop for the back-to-school season, get ready to be spoiled for choice. At its event in Taiwan today, ASUS showed off a slew of new laptops and convertibles, leading with the ZenBook Flip S, which the company says is the “world’s thinnest 2-in-1 convertible laptop”. At 10.9mm thin and weighing 1.1kg, the 13-inch Flip S certainly has a smaller footprint than other similarly sized systems from Apple, HP, Acer and Lenovo. That thin profile, along with new minimal display bezels that ASUS is callng “NanoEdge,” is the clear focus for the company’s laptop refresh this year.

At a crowded demo area here in Taipei, I spent some time with the Flip S, checking out its screen, keyboard and hinge in particular. Right off the bat, I was most taken by the Flip’s beautiful blue-and-gold color scheme, although the device was so smudge-prone that ASUS reps were swooping in with cloths to wipe the laptops down every other minute. I found images and text on the display crisp and colorful, while the keyboard was comfortable and the touchpad was roomy and responsive as I navigated the Windows 10 OS. And indeed, the Flip S is a lightweight, portable machine that is easy enough to lift with one hand.

To achieve that slick size, ASUS says it had to invent a new “liquid-crystal-polymer fan” that’s just 0.3mm thin to keep the system cool. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Microsoft also said it had to come up with its own liquid-cooling system for the Surface Pro 3.

The Flip S runs Windows 10 S, and is supposed to pack a fingerprint sensor for secure logins via Windows Hello. I didn’t see one on my demo unit, though. Powering the Flip is a powerful Intel Core i7 chip that can get achieve up to 3.5-GHZ boost speeds, which is impressive, as well as a 1TB SSD.

Its 13.3-inch 4K display, surrounded by a 6.11mm bezel on the vertical sides, supports active stylus input, too. The Pen will recognize 1,024 levels of force, and it worked smoothly when I jotted down notes on the preview unit. It’s not clear if the company will be throwing in an ASUS Pen with notebook, though. The Flip S will start at $1,099 when it retails in September. At the event, ASUS also unveiled a new $1,299 ZenBook Pro and recapped its ZenBook 3 Deluxe, which will cost $1,199.

Also interesting is the new VivoBook Pro N580, which is the more powerful of two additions to the company’s midrange line. Not only is it among the most affordable notebooks to have an NVIDIA GTX1050 graphics chip, but it also features a more-premium design borrowed from the higher-end Zenbook line. The 15-inch machine will be equipped with a powerful Intel Core i7-7700 HQ chip and up to 16GB of RAM, which is an uncommonly strong combination for the expected price range. To keep those parts from overheating, the VivoBook Pro will sport a dual-fan cooling system within its 19.2mm-thick aluminum chassis.

There’s also a new VivoBook S15, which gets a ZenBook-like design as well, and has a 17.9mm-thick chassis, Intel’s Core i7 and NVIDIA’s GTX 940 chips. Thanks to the “NanoEdge” bezels, the laptops look like 14-inch machines despite packing 15-inch screens. The VivoBook Pro will start at $799, while the S15 will cost from $499, which are impressively low price tags for what they offer.

If you’re in the market for a home system instead, ASUS also unveiled two new all-in-ones that should tickle your fancy. The Zen Z241, in particular, is supposedly the most affordable of the company’s AiOs, and features an 88 percent screen-to-body ratio, also thanks to that “NanoEdge” bezel from the laptops. The 23.8-inch screen has a less-impressive 1080p resolution, but its discrete GeForce 930MX card should provide decent graphics performance. If you want something more powerful, the new Z242 AiO is a more suitable option with its NVIDIA GTX 1050 chip, it packs mostly the same specs otherwise. Both these systems will be available in July, but we don’t know their prices yet. We’ll update you once we get the information, though, so be sure to check back later.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from Computex 2017!

ASUS ZenBook Pro UX550 is a powerhouse with a 4K touchscreen

It’s been well over two years since ASUS announced its original ZenBook Pro, and while it received a spec bump late last year, it’s about time for the company to revamp its premium desktop replacement line. Announced at the “Edge of Beyond” event ahead of Computex, the new ZenBook Pro UX550 once again dons a 15.6-inch 4K touchscreen behind the spin-metal lid, except this time it comes with Intel’s top Kaby Lake option plus an NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti graphics chip (with 4GB DDR5 VRAM). More notably, at 18.9mm thick and 1.8kg heavy, the UX550 is one of the most portable laptops in its class, beating the Dell Inspiron 15 7000 (25.44mm, 2.62kg) and Acer Nitro 5 (26.75mm, 2.7kg) which pack similar specs (except for their lack of 4K display option), while almost matching the smaller 14-inch Razer Blade (17.9mm, 1.86kg).

Compared to its predecessor, the UX550 is able to make better use of its 4K display thanks to its quad-core Kaby Lake CPUs: both the top-tier Core i7-7700HQ (2.8GHz to 3.8GHz; 8 threads, 6MB cache) and the Core i5-7300HQ (2.5GHz to 3.5GHz; 4 threads, 6MB cache) feature dedicated 4K HEVC support, meaning they can process 4K video more efficiently. The UX550 has swapped one of the old USB Type-A ports for a second Type-C port next to the full-size HDMI 1.4 port, and with both Type-C ports supporting the Thunderbolt 3 spec (up to 40 Gbps), this laptop can handle dual 4K video output and power delivery.

The laptop’s own 4K display has the same 72-percent NTSC gamut plus 178-degree viewing angle as before, though this time it has a slimmer 7.3mm bezel, which has helped shave 18mm off the previous body width. But there is a trade-off: ASUS decided to remove the numeric keypad, likely because it thinks not many people need this feature these days. Another downside — though probably unrelated — is that the old full-size SD card slot is now just a microSD slot, which is a nuisance for people like me who still use SD cards in our cameras.

On a brighter note, the UX550 has a denser battery with a whopping 12 to 14 hours worth of juice — almost doubling that of the older model; and its quick charging can take it from zero to 60 percent in just 49 minutes. It can be configured with up to 16GB of DDR4-2400 RAM and up to 1TB of PCIe x4 SSD. There’s also a new dual-fan cooling system to keep the CPU and GPU well-behaved. Another nice upgrade is the Harman/Kardon-certified quad-speaker audio system — one driver on each side of the backlit keyboard (with 1.5mm key travel) and two beneath the trackpad. Speaking of, the multitouch glass trackpad has gained a fingerprint reader at the top right corner.

Based on our brief hands-on time with the UX550, it feels like a laptop that can go toe-to-toe with the MacBook Pro. The 4K screen looks bright and bold, and the keyboard is a huge improvement from what we typically see from ASUS. Its case is also solid and well constructed, nothing like the ZenBook 3 from last year. The big takeaway? ASUS seems to have learned a lot over the past few years when it comes to building a refined laptop.

The ZenBook Pro UX550 is launching with either Windows 10 Pro or Windows 10 Home in July this year, starting at $1,299.

Devindra Hardawar contributed to this report.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from Computex 2017!

ASUS blew a hole in its newest wireless router

Wireless routers have been, for years, ugly black rectangles that we’ve habitually tried to bury behind our TVs and bookshelves. ASUS is hoping that you’ll think differently about the Blue Cave, its new WiFi router that looks like an electric pencil sharpener on human growth hormone. The device with a hole is an AC2600 dual-band WiFi router that, the company promises, can handle enough connections to cope with your growing home.

That design isn’t just for looks, although it certainly is striking. Rather than add the antennas outside the device, the company built them into the roof of the Blue Cave. The motherboard — which uses Intel technology — is then sat on the bottom, with the hole providing some useful distance between the two.

Capacity is no substitute for speed, but ASUS believes that the Blue Cave will also let you stream 4K video and share files without any lag. Plus, the router supports IFTTT (and Alexa) out of the box, helping you to build recipes that’ll run your home and make your digital life that little bit easier.

Of course, wireless security, especially related to the internet of things, has become a bit of a hot button issue of late. That’s why Blue Cave boasts of having AiProtection, a “free for life” security solution from Trend Micro that’ll keep your devices safe from hackers.

In addition, ASUS is letting smartphone users run the router from an app on their smartphone in a similar way to Google WiFi. Administrators can view network usage, set family time limits and control what apps can access the internet. The apps will also send a notification whenever a new device is added to the network, and if AiProtection detects a potential hack.

We know that the device will set you back around $180 when it launches, but when that day will be is, as yet, unclear.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from Computex 2017!

Silicon-laced diamonds could lead to practical quantum computers

Scientists already believe that diamonds could be a solid foundation for practical quantum computers. You can use atom-scale defects in diamond to store quantum bits that hold contradictory data (say, both on and off) in a way that lets you read the data without the risk of changing it. But there’s a problem. The most common defect, where nitrogen atoms replace carbon atoms, emits such a broad range of light that it’s too inaccurate to be useful. However, a team of researchers may have a way to keep those inaccuracies to a minimum: slip in some silicon, which emits a much narrower range of light.

The trick involves whittling down a synthetic diamond until it’s just 200 nanometers thick, etching optical cavities into its surface (to increase the brightness of light emissions) and using a special nanoscale implanter to shoot silicon ions into those cavities. You can only inject a limited amount of silicon if you do nothing else, but the team managed to create more silicon-filled defects by blasting the diamond with electron beams (which creates more cavities) and heating the diamond until the holes moved around and bonded with silicon. The more you repeat this process, the more defects you get.

The technology isn’t ready for prime time. The resulting defects aren’t quite in their ideal locations (they’re about 50 nanometers off), so they don’t emit enough light to maintain the quality researchers would like. This is much better than previous approaches, though, and hints that real, diamond-based quantum computers are within reach.

Source: MIT News, Nature

ARM shows off the first processors based on Dynamiq technology

Why it matters to you

ARM’s new Dynamiq architecture promises to dramatically improve performance and energy efficiency.

In March, ARM, the holding company that designs the chips in billions of phones, cars, and mobile devices, announced Dynamiq, a new platform that promised performance and efficiency improvements over current-gen architectures. Since then, details on new chips have been hard to come by, but that all changed Sunday evening with the introduction of the Cortex-A75 and Cortex-A55 processors and Mali-G72 graphics chip — the first based on Dynamiq.

ARM is promising “ground-breaking performance” with the Cortex-A75, which performance gains as high as 50 percent in areas such as artificial intelligence. ARM calls the Cortex-A75  “laptop-ready,” and sees it best suited for large-screen devices, networking equipment, and cars.

The Cortex-A55, on the other hand, doubles down on power efficiency. It’s up to 2.5 times more efficient compared to ARM’s current crop of processor and tailored for “everyday devices” like tablets, smartphones, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Both the Cortex-A55 and Cortex-A75 benefit from a fast single-thread performance and Dynamiq’s new Big.Little configuration, an ARM technology that intelligently switches between processor cores as needed. The Cortex-A75 has four high-power cores (Big) and four low-power cores (Little), and the Cortex-A55 has 1 high-performance core (Big) and seven low-power cores (Little).

There is a polygon-themed Daydream park where people can demo Google’s mobile virtual reality headset.

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Other platform changes include CryptoCell-712, the newest version of ARM’s subsystem security architecture, and native support for high dynamic range (HDR), a high-contrast display standard.

New processors are not the only thing ARM had up its sleeve. It took the wraps off the Mali-G72, the first graphics chip designed on the Dynamiq platform.

Enhanced graphics are the chip’s headlining feature. ARM said the Mali-G72 is 25 percent more power efficient and cuts down on bandwidth by 87 percent, leading to 1.4 times better overall performance than the 2017 devices.

ARM said the beefed-up chip will benefit virtual reality and “high fidelity” apps. To that end, the Mali-G72 supports mobile multi-view, an advanced rendering feature for Samsung’s Gear VR headset; foveated rendering, a technique that uses an eye tracker integrated with a VR headset; adaptive scalable texture compression (ASTC), a compression algorithm that supports HDR and multiple color formats; and multisample anti-aliasing (MSAA), which improves image quality by smoothing out the rough edges of objects.

ARM’s targeting AI applications with the Mali-G72, too. New algorithms and other optimizations make it 17 percent more efficient at on-device AI computing, ARM said, making it the “most efficient Mali GPU for machine learning [yet].”

ARM said devices equipped with the Mali-G72 and either the ARM-A75 or ARM-A55 will be capable of “real-time inference” and “on-device learning” that enhances user privacy and powers and new, intuitive user interfaces. “[The new chips] have [the] compute performance to deliver a hi-fidelity world,” ARM said. “[It’s] AI in your hand.”

ARM’s building on the success of its existing chip business. The company said that more than a billion Mali chips shipped in 2016 and that 50 percent of mobile virtual reality headsets and 50 percent of smartphones pack the chip. It is projected to ship 100 billion chips between 2017 and to its more than 450 silicon partners and 1,000 community partners, which doubles the 50 billion in shipped between 2013 and 2017.

ARM shows off the first processors based on Dynamiq technology

Why it matters to you

ARM’s new Dynamiq architecture promises to dramatically improve performance and energy efficiency.

In March, ARM, the holding company that designs the chips in billions of phones, cars, and mobile devices, announced Dynamiq, a new platform that promised performance and efficiency improvements over current-gen architectures. Since then, details on new chips have been hard to come by, but that all changed Sunday evening with the introduction of the Cortex-A75 and Cortex-A55 processors and Mali-G72 graphics chip — the first based on Dynamiq.

ARM is promising “ground-breaking performance” with the Cortex-A75, which performance gains as high as 50 percent in areas such as artificial intelligence. ARM calls the Cortex-A75  “laptop-ready,” and sees it best suited for large-screen devices, networking equipment, and cars.

The Cortex-A55, on the other hand, doubles down on power efficiency. It’s up to 2.5 times more efficient compared to ARM’s current crop of processor and tailored for “everyday devices” like tablets, smartphones, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Both the Cortex-A55 and Cortex-A75 benefit from a fast single-thread performance and Dynamiq’s new Big.Little configuration, an ARM technology that intelligently switches between processor cores as needed. The Cortex-A75 has four high-power cores (Big) and four low-power cores (Little), and the Cortex-A55 has 1 high-performance core (Big) and seven low-power cores (Little).

There is a polygon-themed Daydream park where people can demo Google’s mobile virtual reality headset.

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Other platform changes include CryptoCell-712, the newest version of ARM’s subsystem security architecture, and native support for high dynamic range (HDR), a high-contrast display standard.

New processors are not the only thing ARM had up its sleeve. It took the wraps off the Mali-G72, the first graphics chip designed on the Dynamiq platform.

Enhanced graphics are the chip’s headlining feature. ARM said the Mali-G72 is 25 percent more power efficient and cuts down on bandwidth by 87 percent, leading to 1.4 times better overall performance than the 2017 devices.

ARM said the beefed-up chip will benefit virtual reality and “high fidelity” apps. To that end, the Mali-G72 supports mobile multi-view, an advanced rendering feature for Samsung’s Gear VR headset; foveated rendering, a technique that uses an eye tracker integrated with a VR headset; adaptive scalable texture compression (ASTC), a compression algorithm that supports HDR and multiple color formats; and multisample anti-aliasing (MSAA), which improves image quality by smoothing out the rough edges of objects.

ARM’s targeting AI applications with the Mali-G72, too. New algorithms and other optimizations make it 17 percent more efficient at on-device AI computing, ARM said, making it the “most efficient Mali GPU for machine learning [yet].”

ARM said devices equipped with the Mali-G72 and either the ARM-A75 or ARM-A55 will be capable of “real-time inference” and “on-device learning” that enhances user privacy and powers and new, intuitive user interfaces. “[The new chips] have [the] compute performance to deliver a hi-fidelity world,” ARM said. “[It’s] AI in your hand.”

ARM’s building on the success of its existing chip business. The company said that more than a billion Mali chips shipped in 2016 and that 50 percent of mobile virtual reality headsets and 50 percent of smartphones pack the chip. It is projected to ship 100 billion chips between 2017 and to its more than 450 silicon partners and 1,000 community partners, which doubles the 50 billion in shipped between 2013 and 2017.