Awesome that ARM are actually out there showcasing and giving...

Awesome that ARM are actually out there showcasing and giving demos of our Akida with their IP, tools and resources at events and trade shows they are presenting at.

Obviously think we have something worth support.

Highlighted our mentions about 3/4 down for those that want to skip the preamble so to speak.

Bringing Next-Gen AI Developer Experiences to Africa

Arm has been across Africa attending various events and initiatives to highlight the range of AI-based developer experiences running on Arm.

newsroom.arm.com

BLOGDECEMBER 20, 2023

Bringing Next-Gen AI Developer Experiences to Africa

Arm colleagues and ambassadors have been travelling across Africa, highlighting the range of AI-based developer experiences running on Arm.

By Stephen Ozoigbo, Senior Director, Ecosystem Development, Education and Research, Arm

In the past two years, Arm has undertaken various initiatives throughout Africa as part of our commitment to support developer communities and local technology ecosystems on the continent. This commitment to Africa continues to gather momentum as part of Arm’s broad mission to build the future of computing and enable AI everywhere, across all technology touchpoints and every corner of the globe. This is why we have been involved in a series of events and initiatives in Africa that focus on education and engagement around Arm-based technologies across the broad computing spectrum.

AI Expo Africa

The first event was AI Expo Africa in South Africa, which is billed as the largest AI and Intelligent Automation Trade show on the continent. In fact, this year saw the largest turnout ever, making it the perfect event for Arm to officially launch our Developer Program for the African audience.

At AI Expo Africa, we joined a community of industry stakeholders from the continent to share the latest Arm IP, tools and resources, with a focus on educating and empowering all developers in the region. We also showcased how Arm is forging a path to the future of computing with local ecosystem solutions designed to support the rapid development of AI.

This commitment was on full display through our demos that covered every corner of computing, including laptops, servers, mobile, and the full spectrum of IoT and embedded systems, with all of them having strong propositions for Endpoint and Edge AI use cases. For the Windows Dev Kit 2023 and Ampere Mt. Collins Server demos, these were the first time that the hardware had been showcased in Africa!

The 2023 Windows Dev Kit was loaded with Visual Studio 2022, as well as Visual Studio Code, and the .Net 7 Arm64 software development kit (SDK) – which are some of the latest developments within the Windows on Arm ecosystem. The demo highlighted the speed and performance of Windows on Arm laptops when opening the latest applications and working with the Windows 11 UI installed on the devices. It also showed how it was possible to install all the workloads in Visual Studio 2022, including the Unity and Unreal Engine development tools for gaming.

The Ampere Mt. Collins Server became a talking point throughout the event due to the improved performance and reduced power consumption that it provides. It has two of Ampere’s Altra CPUs that feature 80 Arm Neoverse N1 cores, giving a total of 160 cores. As AI workloads intensify, it is becoming increasingly important for data centers to maintain performance, power efficiency and a low total cost of ownership. This is exactly what the Neoverse compute platform delivers, alongside an unmatched flexibility for our partners to innovate.

The Arm booth at AI Africa Expo

The additional demos were a range hardware, including the Arduino Pro and BrainChip’s Akida, that highlighted how Arm IP can be implemented across embedded systems that utilize AI workloads. As compute power increases, developers can leverage AI workloads for applications that are targeting the smallest, most power and cost-constrained embedded systems, all built on Arm.

At the event, we also hosted a workshop that featured a hands-on equipment and stage display, including live run-throughs of the demos listed previously. This was alongside a live demo of Arm Virtual Hardware, which showed how the IoT development tool offers a variety of fully-virtualized devices, from an Arm-based Android phone to Raspberry Pi 4.

AI Expo Africa demonstrated how the variety of Arm-powered computing solutions can benefit developers in the region from all backgrounds, while also showcasing how Arm is simplifying the deployment of AI workloads across all technology markets. We were extremely grateful for the support shown by our regional Arm Developer Program Ambassador Peter Ing who displayed infectious enthusiasm for all things Arm throughout the event. We are looking for more African-based ambassadors to join the Arm Developer Program, highlighting the breadth and diversity of engineering talent that exists on the continent.