Ambition to arm more than 100 billion AI devices by 2025

At Computex 2024 in Taipei, Arm CEO Rene Haas shared ambitious plans to have more than 100 billion Arm devices ready for AI applications by 2025, from the cloud to the edge. He detailed the company’s strategies and innovations designed to meet the growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) power and described how Arm’s unique software ecosystem underpins its technology leadership.

The main topic of Haas’ speech was whether the world has enough energy to meet the growing computing needs of artificial intelligence. Although artificial intelligence is developing rapidly, its efficiency and energy requirements are constantly increasing. Haas emphasized that ARM’s renowned energy efficiency, rooted in its history of developing battery-powered devices, uniquely positions it to meet these challenges. Leading cloud service providers such as AWS, Google, and Microsoft have already adopted the ARM architecture for its exceptional energy efficiency.

Arm has a legacy of energy efficiency that has helped it become a ubiquitous computing platform. Haas emphasized that ARM’s success is also due to its robust software ecosystem, which includes 18 million developers – more than any other processor platform. This broad support for developers is essential to realizing the full societal benefits of AI, from edge devices to cloud-based training and inference.

To further support developer innovation, Haas introduced Arm Kleidi AI, a set of AI computing libraries. These tools enable developers to seamlessly run AI applications on ARM hardware by leveraging core hardware features for optimal performance. As Haas noted, without accessible developer tools, even advanced hardware would go unused.

Haas also shared insights from industry partners on the benefits of Arm and Kleidi AI. Executives from Samsung Mobile, Meta and Google showed how these innovations can accelerate the development of artificial intelligence in various markets. For example, Samsung highlighted how it is using Arm technology to deliver AI experiences on Galaxy devices, expanding its capabilities to AI-enabled computers.

In addition to supporting AI developers, Arm continues to expand its hardware offerings. Chris Bergey, senior vice president and general manager of Arm’s client business line, announced the launch of Arm Compute Subsystems (CSS) for client devices. This marks the first physical implementation of Arm’s CPUs and GPUs using state-of-the-art 3nm nodes. These implementations enable chipmakers to differentiate their products while reducing time to market for proven high-performance cores.

The new Arm CSS products, built on the Armv9 architecture, deliver significant performance improvements. For example, the Arm X925 processor boasts a 36% performance increase over its predecessor, as well as improved artificial intelligence capabilities and energy efficiency. Similarly, the Immortalis 925 GPU delivers a 37% performance increase, with a significant 52% increase in ray tracing capability.

Bergey highlighted how these advancements enable devices ranging from laptops to wearables to take advantage of improved artificial intelligence and computing power. The integration of the ARM software ecosystem, including Kleidi AI and computational vision libraries, ensures that developers can efficiently optimize their applications on next-generation hardware.

Haas said ARM is committed to delivering the most complete computing platforms designed to transform the industry and benefit society as a whole. With innovations like Arm CSS and Kleidi AI, the company predicts that more than 100 billion Arm devices will be AI-ready by the end of 2025, a milestone that promises to revolutionize the technology and its applications around the world.