Android Development Basics 4 (Samsung, ARM for Big friends endorsement, detailed VR integrated machine solution)

Requirement Description: Android development

Content: The first part of the Big Friends VR integrated machine solution

Part two Samsung VR integrated machine solution

From: The time of the poem

Original: http://www.ithome.com/html/it/235838.htm

The first part of the Big Friends VR integrated machine

As one of the leading virtual reality enterprises in China, the company has pioneered the world's first mass-produced VR machine, and in just two years, the industry prestige and market position continue to soar. Aside from the strategic and team factors, there are certainly many "backed" players behind it, including Samsung, which provides AMOLED screens and Exynos 7420 processors for the Big Friends VR machine, and ARM companies that technically collaborate on GPU core algorithm optimization.

March 24, 2016, the big friends VR all-in-one press conference, ARM Global senior vice President Dennis Laudick personally to the platform. He said that the cooperation between arm and the big Friends VR core team, Maligpu made a lot of rendering optimization.

ARM executives for the big friends VR all-in-one platform

March 17, 2016, Samsung Semiconductor business president and general manager Kinam Kim to visit the big Friends VR, and experience the big Friends VR integrated machine. Kim praised the launcher and VR games of the Big Friends VR machine and gave a high degree of recognition to the clear, very low latency experience.

Kinam Kim is experiencing the big friend machine

Big friends VR, Samsung, arm three of the relationship also through the Big Friends VR integrated machine cooperation to produce more in-depth intersection, June 14, 2016, Samsung China Research institute Dean and Vice president David Wu, big friends VR founder Chen Chao jointly attended the Shenzhen ARM Technology Forum. David Wu and Chen Chao all believe that the development of mobile VR all-in-one is much larger.

Big Friends VR Chen Chao on ARM Technology Forum

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Part two Samsung VR integrated machine solution

The following is an electronic enthusiast's presentation of David Wu, who briefly describes the current status of Samsung semiconductors and the layout of the VR landscape, detailing the technical advantages of the Exynos VR series application processor for VR and the Samsung Exynos VR solution:

I'm glad to have this opportunity to share with you some of the VR solutions of Samsung Semiconductor Exynos Soc. Samsung Semiconductor Everyone should have heard, but because Samsung's business is more extensive, so we contact the most should also Samsung's mobile phone. Samsung Semiconductor, the core of Samsung Electronics, is in the forefront of the industry, which can be reflected in the sales of memory--Samsung's sales have been second in the more than 10 years, after Intel.

Business perspective, Samsung Semiconductor is the most advantage of memory, including a variety of memory cards and current SSD SSDs, but in addition, in the non-storage area, what we call "System LSI", in the industry is also very leading, The representative products include application processor (e.g. Samsung7460), CMOS Image sensor, etc.

Samsung Semiconductor's most unique advantage lies in the process, with the world's first successful production of 14NM FinFET LP process chip, its own foundry guarantee process and flow sheet production capacity, can also do the OEM. Last year, Samsung's total sales of more than $40 billion, growth rate is good.

Unlike other semiconductor manufacturers in the industry, Samsung Semiconductors offers one-stop chip supply and solutions. For smartphone we are able to provide good processor, memory and so on.

And now we are in the mobile internet/iot era, "smart" contains products in addition to smartphones, smart watches, but also the emergence of medical wearable devices, smart homes, driverless cars and so on, this time chip development and one-stop solutions, build ecosystems, etc. are very critical, Today we will take the example of the current comparison of the VR field of fire to discuss.

From the data graph, you can see the sales of different hardware devices, from PCs to tablets to smartphones, where the sales of smartphones are currently the largest, but we can also see that the number of VR device users is growing at a considerable rate.

Currently there are several forms of VR products: Desktop VR, mobile-based VR, mobile VR equipment (one machine). Data trends for different VR devices may not be the same, but the overall development of VR is quite good. At present, the mainstream media reports that the Mobile VR integrated machine after the development of a larger scale.

We will review the definition of VR, generally refers to the use of computer technology for users to create an immersive user experience, the most fundamental is the stereoscopic display technology. Stereoscopic display technology includes three-dimensional vision, lens, processing, generation, interaction and content generation of a comprehensive technology. It is very important to display the interactive technology, which realizes the timely feedback of the scene through the interactive technology.

These computing techniques have also been, why VR now suddenly fire up, very important reason is the development of semiconductor technology, the integration of the chip, increase the computing power, so that the VR device mobile becomes possible, the whole machine at this time began to explode.

Samsung Semiconductor for VR launch Exynos VR series application processor, the most mature, has begun to mass production of products is our Exynos VR7, is launched last year, the first 14nm FinFET ultra-low-power production process products. This year we launched our second-generation product Exynos VR8,CPU processor with custom Mongoose M1, which greatly improves performance and power consumption.

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The upper part mainly tells the chip, that from our familiar point of view, Samsung Exynos VR solution basically divides into several levels:

1. H/W Platform Development Board

-based on the mature hardware platform of Exynos processor, increase the VR characteristic, make the related optimization

-AP,WI-FI/BT Audio Codec,sensor,charger ...

-Refer to the first version of the machine 6/e release

2. BSP Platform

-S/phone-based BSP platform adds support for VR features and makes related cropping

The-exynos7420 platform has been tested and continuously optimized in the customer

3. SDK Platform

-Support customer-independent SDK development

-Providing a holistic solution through collaboration with third parties

VR products have several key elements, can also be said to be called difficult.

The first one is the virtual sense. A very important point to realize the virtual sense is the low latency, i.e. the display screen will be refreshed quickly with the change of people's sight. The general requirements of the field of view return delay of less than 20ms, a higher demand to achieve 15-16ms. Human beings are very sensitive to changes in the head rotation and the relative field of vision, according to research statistics, more than 20ms will have obvious picture out of sync. At present, the conventional architecture can not meet this requirement, including Android display and so on.

The VR experience actually requires a complex technology processing process, from sensor acquisition, transmission, game engine processing, drive hardware rendering, LCD pixel color switching, and finally to the human eye to see the corresponding screen, each step through the middle of the process will produce a latency (we call it delay).

The second focus is on low afterglow. The brightness of the pixel will have a long time to drag, low afterglow closer to the actual physical world, the current use of OLED display has a great advantage

Third, the performance of VR products is also very critical. Cpu/gpu's stable output is the guarantee of a stable picture, such as today's organizer arm's Mali GPU technology is also very advanced in this area. It is the GPU that uses these advanced technologies, so product performance is guaranteed, and the thermal solution also plays an important role.

For these key elements, let's take a look at the technical advantages of Samsung Exynos VR solutions and talk about solutions and optimizations.

First, the optimization of 3d/disliay

Just mentioned, a very important factor to reduce vertigo is low latency, and the arm Mali GPU itself has done a lot of optimizations for VR. Multi View technology can support binocular stereoscopic display, Ccmtext priority, AFBC and so on these technologies are to make the view changes when the screen can be updated immediately.

On the chip, the Front Buffer rendering allows the updated screen to be displayed after 1 frames, triggering quickly and forcing updates.

Second, sensor optimization

Sensor interaction technology is also critical. Conventional accelerators, gyroscopes, magnetic sensors add, plus all of the data is then transmitted to the application processor for processing, but this processing produces a large power consumption, will also lead to some misoperation, is not very effective.

And the sensor hub is to put a few sensor together, in itself there is an MCU, will do some pre-processing, and then some effective data transfer to the CPU for processing, which is to provide a fusion algorithm. If you do it better, you can sample within 1MS and then provide the result of the fusion to the upper application processor.

Third, heat dissipation technology

The performance of VR products is very important, in order to continuously stable performance, heat dissipation technology is very critical. For example, the Exynos 7420 power consumption at full speed is 5W, if the use of heat pipe technology can achieve 7W heat dissipation. Optimizing the Kernel FM strategy ensures that the AP is working at maximum performance for more time.

Finally, Samsung provides a total solution for VR products, the greatest benefit is to shorten the VR product from start to production time, product development threshold is low; Technically, Samsung has top-notch hardware/software technology, such as the Exynos 7, the latest Exynos 8. Both Samsung and ARM are big international companies, and very close cooperation in VR projects, open, cooperative labs for Chinese customers can provide very good support.

Android Development Basics 4 (Samsung, ARM for Big friends endorsement, detailed VR integrated machine solution)