Adobe Considers Using Custom ARM Chips

AlphaAtlas

AlphaAtlas

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A report by Ina Fried on Axios claims that Adobe threw out the idea of powering their software with custom ARM CPUs at an "internal innovation conference" on Tuesday. Adobe CTO Abhay Parasnis posed the question "Do we need to become an ARM licensee? I don't have the answer, but it is something we are going to have to pay attention to." He also reiterated the importance of AI in the company's future software, and called for "100 new machine learning models on its Sensei platform by the end of the year." Thanks to Bit-Tech for spotting the report.

"ARM does afford a model for a software company to package its technology much closer to silicon," he said, adding Adobe could do that without literally making its own chips, including by partnering with an existing chipmaker... Parasnis said it will be ARM-based chips that deliver those gains, not Intel, whose processors power all of today's Macs and most Windows PCs. At the conference he showed a logo that said "ARM Inside," a play on the Intel Inside logo that adorned computers for years. "I believe we are firmly entering a world of ARM inside every device," he said.
 
Great! Adobe appliances. :p

(yes I realize that's not what this is about, but it popped into my head)
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
So, how would this work? You need a custom ARM addon board just to use Adobe software?

Seems dumb.
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they are prolly looking at something like a wacom type lcd stylus that ties in with their software and prolly thier own app store for various add-ons etc
 
How I know that I should go to bed now: I read "Parasnis said it will be ARM-based..." as "Penis said it will be ARM-based..."

Good night, everyone.
 
Stoly said:
Actually, I think it could be.
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Maybe in some sense, or it could evolve to that in some way. From what I read from the link, it seemed more aimed at them using their own chips in servers for machine learning. How that then gets applied to their software or services I don't know.
 
AI batch rendering and filters. Krita is a decent and free alternative for ps if they start requiring hardware dongles.
 
Nunu said:
AI batch rendering and filters. Krita is a decent and free alternative for ps if they start requiring hardware dongles.
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Their monthly credit card dongle was enough to send me to Affinity Photo
 
Brian_B said:
Sounds like physical DRM dongles... great idea. /s
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InnovMetric sure agrees (no /s).

I sure love managing their licenses for my business. /s

I manage Adobe as well and they are killing their serialized licenses we bought from them, all of them.

Fun times to be a Software Asset Manager indeed. /s
 
Aww man. Here is comes. Now Adobe's going to copy Avid's business model. Necessary proprietary hardware to use with their proprietary software. Can't use Adobe CC without our special little dongle! Make sure you subscribe to our service first! Screw em. Here's to Affinity and Davinci resolve.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
So, how would this work? You need a custom ARM addon board just to use Adobe software?

Seems dumb.
Click to expand...

A usb stick?

I suspect that they're thinking more in the line of having their chips built into the devices (phones, tablets, or even cameras).
 
Consider Lightroom CC is now supposed to be "cloud based", I would think this is what they are on about. It's not that they want you to have this stuff on your system, it's when you're using a Cloud application of theirs, there will be custom ARM chips that do the processing in the background.
 
juanrga said:
What about using an addon board or a SoC for accelerating Adobe software.

Seems smart.
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Sounds needlessly expensive, but then again, Adobe software already is.

Actually sounds like a brilliant way to counter piracy. If you ship with with binaries that require specialized ARM hardware to run, no one without that specialized ARM hardware can run it....
 
I thought the entire cloud-based switch was to stop piracy, and look how well that turned out.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Sounds needlessly expensive, but then again, Adobe software already is.

Actually sounds like a brilliant way to counter piracy. If you ship with with binaries that require specialized ARM hardware to run, no one without that specialized ARM hardware can run it....
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You didn't understand my point. Binaries run on any general purpose hardware. The same binaries are accelerated on specialised hardware.
 
juanrga said:
If you had paid more attention, you would be aware of all my posts about ARM and RISC-V stuff, including my threads and posts in the non-AMD/Intel subforum about how Intel is doomed...
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To be fair I don't read that deep into the forum but I caught a few thread where it was fun let's say :)

Back onto topic, an ARM PCIe card to accelerate Adobe products on PC, yeah maybe... seems harder to do on laptop or tablets ? Maybe USB-C could do it...
Because you know, apple sold the ipad pro marketing it as a production tablet.
 
MMitch said:
To be fair I don't read that deep into the forum but I caught a few thread where it was fun let's say :)

Back onto topic, an ARM PCIe card to accelerate Adobe products on PC, yeah maybe... seems harder to do on laptop or tablets ? Maybe USB-C could do it...
Because you know, apple sold the ipad pro marketing it as a production tablet.
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Why PCIe card? I would expect an accelerator integrated in the SoC.

mesharchitecture.png
 
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