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May 10, 2016

Why NXP is Moving to FD-SOI (Part II)

Why NXP is Moving to FD-SOI (Part II)
by Ron Martino on 05-10-2016 at 2:00 pm
Categories: Arm, Automotive, EDA, FD-SOI, IP

At NXP, we’re very excited about the prospects for our new i.MX 7 and 8 series of applications processors, which we’re manufacturing on 28nm FD-SOI. As noted in part I of this article series, the new i.MX 7 series, which leverages the 32-bit ARM v7-A core, is targeting the general embedded, e-reader, medical, wearable and IoT markets, where power efficiency is paramount. The i.MX 8 series leverages the 64-bit ARM v8-A series, targeting automotive applications, especially driver information systems, and well as high-performance general embedded and advanced graphics applications.

Choosing an FD-SOI solution gave our designers some specific tools that helped them to more easily and robustly deliver the features our customers are looking for. Here in part 2, we’ll look a little more deeply into the markets each of these chip families is targeting, and the role FD-SOI plays in helping us meet our specs.

i.MX 7 Series: IoT, wearables and so much more

Announced last June, the first members of our new 7 series — the i.MX 7Solo and i.MX 7Dual product families — will be hitting the market shortly. We’ve been shipping samples since last year, and the response has been tremendous. (You can read about the i.MX 7 IoT ecosystem we’re helping create for our customers here and support for wearable markets here.)

Our i.MX 7 customers are building products for power- and cost-sensitive markets. That of course includes a vast array of innovative IoT solutions and wearables, but also solutions for other parts of the embedded market like handheld point-of-sale (POS) and medical devices, smart home controls and industrial products. The i.MX 7 series also continues NXP’s industry leading support for the e-reader market via integration of an advanced, fourth-generation EPD controller.

For all these markets, excellent performance is very important, but both dynamic and static power figures are really key. When you’re creating a system with power efficient processing and low-power deep sleep modes, you enable a new tier of performance-on-demand, battery-operated devices that are lighter and cheaper, and in a virtuous cycle require smaller batteries.

The next members of the NXP i.MX 7 series combine ultra-low power (dynamically leveraging the reverse back biasing you can do with FD-SOI) and performance-on-demand architecture (boosted when needed with FD-SOI’s forward back-biasing). It’s the industry’s first general purpose microprocessor family to incorporate both the ARM[SUP]®[/SUP] Cortex[SUP]®[/SUP]-A7 and the ARM Cortex-M4 cores (customers can choose between single or dual A7 cores). These technologies, together with our new companion PF3000 power management IC, unleash the potential for dramatically innovative, secure and power efficient end-products for wearable computing and IoT applications.

The initial offering of i.MX 7 was designed (on 28nm bulk) with Cortex-A7 cores operating up to 1 GHz, while the Cortex-M4 core operates at up to 200 MHz. The Cortex-A7 and Cortex-M4 achieve processor core efficiency levels of 100 microWatts (μW) /MHz and 70 μW /MHz respectively.

A Low Power State Retention (LPSR), battery-saving mode can be improved by FD-SOI and consumes only 250 μW, representing a 3x improvement over our previous generation (on 40nm bulk). That’s almost 50% better than our competitors. Plus it minimizes wake up times without requiring Linux reboot, while supporting DDR self-refresh mode, GPIO wakeup, and memory state retention.

The next members of the i.MX 7 series, with FD-SOI dynamic back-biasing, enable different blocks to be reverse or forward back-biased on the fly to attain always-optimal power savings or performance. Additional power optimization features are enabled to achieve leadership power efficiency. We’ve optimized FD-SOI dynamic back-biasing to enable performance-on-demand architecture through which the i.MX 7 series meets the bursty, high-performance needs (this is when forward back-biasing kicks in) of running Linux, graphical user interfaces, high-security technologies like Elliptic Curve Cryptography, as well as wireless stacks or other high-bandwidth data transfers with one or multiple Cortex-A7 cores.

When high levels of processing are not needed, low-power modes kick in with reverse back biasing of the critical subsystems, and the ongoing, real-time work is carried on by the smaller, lower powered Cortex-M4.

All things considered, it’s perhaps no surprise that we expect i.MX 7 series solutions for cost-sensitive markets to be a key driver of our long-term i.MX portfolio expansion.

i.MX 8: Revolutionizing automotive, interactive multimedia/display apps
Our new i.MX 8 series portfolio, based on 28nm FD-SOI process technology, targets highly-advanced driver information systems and other multi-media intensive embedded applications. It incorporates those same key attributes as the i.MX 7, but extends them into realms the industry has never experienced. We believe the i.MX 8 series is poised to revolutionize interactivity in multimedia and display applications across all kinds of industries.

i.MX 8 incorporates innovations in the processor — complex graphics, vision, virtualization and safety to help revolutionize interactivity for a wide range of uses in many, many markets. The capabilities of this family is broad, but one of the places it’s going to be the biggest game-changer is in what is becoming the e-cockpit of your car.

For almost two decades, SOI has shone in the embedded processing world. In addition, NXP counts every major automotive maker in the world amongst its customers for our devices. Entering the new e-cockpit frontier, 28nm FD-SOI is the logical choice in making the i.MX 8 series meet and exceed the stringent requirements of top automotive OEMs for years to come.

The i.MX 8 series leverages ARM’s V8-A 64-bit architecture in a 10+ core complex that includes blocks of Cortex-A72s and Cortex-A53s.  All the FD-SOI advantages discussed above for the i.MX 7 are also being brought to bear here (the power envelope for automotive designers being extremely strict). But in the hot and electrically noisy automotive environment, FD-SOI also plays an important role in ensuring robust operation.

The way we see it, your car’s multimedia centric e-cockpit will revolve around the i.MX 8, a single chip that drives all displays from infotainment to heads-up-displays (HUD) to instrument clusters. It’s optimized for the intelligent transfer of data and information management from multiple subsystems within the IC – as opposed to only delivering raw performance through one or two processing blocks.
For drivers and passengers alike, we’re looking at a very different world: one that includes the spread of advanced heads-up displays, intuitive gesture control, natural speech recognition, augmented reality, enhanced convenience and device connectivity. (I wrote a blog exploring the possibilities last fall – you can read it here.)

And of course, it will be secure from hackers, and fail-safe for critical systems.

From our customers’ standpoint, they can design a single hardware platform and scale it across multiple market segments with the unique approach to pin and software compatibility within the i.MX product families.

The i.MX family has been leveraged in over 35 million vehicles since it was first launched in vehicles in 2010. So with all these new features, and low-power and robust performance, we see a very bright future for FD-SOI and the i.MX 8 in automotive. It’s going to be a great ride.

By Ronald M. Martino, Vice President, i.MX Applications Processor and Advanced Technology Adoption, NXP Semiconductors

May 10, 2016June 14, 2019

TSMC and Solido on Variation-Aware Design of Memory and Standard Cell at Advanced Process Nodes

TSMC and Solido on Variation-Aware Design of Memory and Standard Cell at Advanced Process Nodes
by Daniel Nenni on 05-10-2016 at 12:00 pm
Categories: EDA, FinFET, Solido

Being that TSMC and Solido are founding members of SemiWiki, you should be able find out everything you ever wanted to know on their respective landing pages. If not, just ask a question in the SemiWiki forum and I can assure you it will be answered in great detail. And here are some other interesting 2015 factoids from Solido:
Continue reading “TSMC and Solido on Variation-Aware Design of Memory and Standard Cell at Advanced Process Nodes”

May 10, 2016

Deep Learning and Security

Deep Learning and Security
by Bernard Murphy on 05-10-2016 at 7:00 am
Categories: Security

Deep learning based on neural nets is most commonly thought of as a very promising approach to scene recognition, text recognition and similar areas. Now there is increasing interest in applying this technology to security objectives. There were a number of papers on this topic in a 2015 BlackHat conference and there are several ventures either investing in or built around this method.

Deep Instinct, one such venture, was founded in 2014 to build security methods on deep learning, and to coin another cool company name around the word “deep”. (I’m hoping someday to see a venture called Deep Doodoo – the founders won’t be stuck for a description of their problem when they get into trouble).

The philosophy behind Deep Instinct and deep learning in general as applied to security is to build automatic adaptability into threat detection and prevention. The dominant approach to detection today requires human involvement at some level, which is why zero day attacks are such a problem – you can’t defend against an attack-type you are seeing for the first time. This presents a general problem for defenses because it’s not difficult to modify a virus in a relatively minor way, or even to make viruses self-modifying to confuse standard methods of detection.

But a neural network initially trained on threat examples can potentially continue to self-train (as Deep Mind’s AlphaGo does for Go games). That could mean that Deep Instinct could significantly improve defenses. Variants of known viruses could be detected and blocked without human intervention and only truly new attacks could hope to succeed.

Deep Instinct has already partnered with FireLayers on security for cloud platforms, which could add further weight to cloud suppliers’ claims that they are actually more secure than in-house systems. All of which is good, but I feel it may be premature to declare victory quite yet. I still see a number of potential issues, though I’m very willing to admit that I may not have a sufficiently deep (there it is again) understanding of the application.

First, training is presumably central but can (post-training) self-learning updates be shared, or does each installation become an island after training, learning on its own but with no ability to share learning? Perhaps there is a way to share but I’m not quite sure how you merge training weights from multiple neural networks. Might some locally-appropriate defenses be lost in that merge or is each merge guaranteed to preserve all subset detections?

A plus to the neural network technique is that it is not easy to hack in the conventional manner – you can’t search for weaknesses in antiviral code for example. But a minus is that neural networks, especially self-training networks, can be hacked by driving them with biased data. Neural net conclusions after all are probabilistic. If I drive data at a neural net which biases to some class of threat examples, I can reduce sensitivity to a different class. Biasing is not an abstract possibility. Microsoft had to withdraw their Tay chatbot recently after it had been gamed into expressing racist and other offensive views.

Finally, one reviewer of the BlackHat papers was somewhat skeptical – not necessarily of the general direction but of lack of depth in published research, also challenges in getting to a sufficiently representative corpus of virus examples for training. Perhaps Deep Instinct has answers to these questions.

You can learn more about Deep Instinct HERE. The BlackHat review is HERE.

Sonics opens new strategy for SoC energy processing

Sonics opens new strategy for SoC energy processing
by Don Dingee on 05-09-2016 at 4:00 pm
Categories: IP, Mobile, Sonics

Back in February when we shared the Sonics philosophy on the ICE-Grain Power Architecture for hardware-based SoC power management, I speculated we’d know more by DAC 2016. Sonics is hitting the road with a new live seminar coming to Silicon Valley this month and Austin during DAC – and the news is big. Continue reading “Sonics opens new strategy for SoC energy processing”

May 9, 2016September 1, 2024

Samsung Could Have A Winner With The Gear 360 VR Camera

Samsung Could Have A Winner With The Gear 360 VR Camera
by Patrick Moorhead on 05-09-2016 at 12:00 pm
Categories: Mobile, Samsung Foundry

For success, VR playback and content must be robust
The world of VR is split into two different areas, tethered PC VR and mobile VR. The reason why so many companies are going after mobile VR is because that’s where all of the volume is expected to be in VR. As a result, you have companies like Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics introducing products for mobile VR as well as companies like Apple and Google hiring lots of staff to build their own VR solutions.

However, even with all of the hardware in the universe, nobody will buy any of it if there isn’t enough compelling content. Without good content that gets consumers excited, there’s no future for VR. However, in order for VR content to be successful there also needs to be a reasonably big install base to support the development of that content. This is where mobile VR has the best chance because it has the biggest opportunity to grow quickly enough into a seriously addressable market. Heck, even Google’s own Google Cardboard has now shipped over 5 million cardboards globally and that is literally a piece of cardboard you put your phone in.

Enter Samsung Gear 360 VR camera
The Gear 360 VR is Samsung’s own solution to the VR content problem, it is a 360-degree VR camera that you can control wirelessly. It has two wide angle cameras that are computationally stitched together and then remove key-stoning in order to give a natural 360 appearance. It has a removable battery and microSD storage. It also has the ability to stream directly to the Gear VR headset or the Galaxy S7 for control purposes. Samsung has created this camera as an integrated solution that allows for both the creation and consumption of VR content on their phones with the Gear VR headset.

Hands-on with the Gear 360 VR
In order to use it you have to open the Samsung Galaxy S7 application, choose to take a photo or video and then preview it on the phone. This preview is streamed directly over Wi-Fi and all you have to do is hit record and it will record locally onto the camera. It also allows you to import it wirelessly through the application onto the phone.

High quality preview (Photo credit: Patrick Moorhead)

It stitches the video together in what seems like real-time and creates a pretty seamless solution for a mobile experience. Alternatively, if you aren’t desperately in need of having content immediately on the go, you can always move the content over to the PC via SD card and edit it there. What makes this camera great is that you can watch the content on your Gear VR, your phone or even your PC, the choice is yours. It wasn’t necessarily the highest quality video I’ve seen before, but the novelty of it distracted me from concerns or thoughts of quality.

Transferring video from camera to phone (Photo credit: Patrick Moorhead)

Potential Gear VR 360 use cases
Having this camera in normal daily situations could actually prove pretty useful for a lot of applications, which is probably what Samsung Electronics is banking on. It could be used for weddings, birthday parties, graduations, actual births, you can now record the entire reaction of everyone in the room rather than having to focus on just one person. It can also be used for educational purposes like hands on activities where seeing the surroundings is extremely valuable like geography and nature. It could also be used by real estate agents to show what a property looks like to remote buyers or simply for previewing purposes. It can also be useful in sporting events and outdoor activities where there is always more going on than meets the eye at first glance.

(Photo credit: Patrick Moorhead)

I am sure there will be plenty of peripherals and wearable applications for these 360-degree VR cameras and the great thing about tech is that someone will eventually invent something really cool for this class of camera.

Gear VR still hasn’t fixed VR “sick”
Even though this camera is really fun and easy to use, consuming its content could still prove problematic for some. The Gear VR still has a chance of making you sick. This is due to the fact that they haven’t added strobing to the HMD or the phone to compensate for lag. As a result, there are still some situations where a user could find themselves getting sick if the content is too intense.

HMD maker IonVR has done a lot of work on their headset to reduce sickness and increase the satisfaction of the experience.

Wrapping up
VR is the hot new thing and everyone is jumping aboard, some companies have already jumped on-board and others are just getting on. Samsung Electronics has already been committed to VR with their Gear VR, but they are furthering their commitment to VR by creating a 360 VR camera, the Gear 360 VR. This is because even though we have VR headsets, there still isn’t enough content out there to make it a compelling experience for many. The Samsung Electronics Gear 360 VR camera could help solve that content problem by helping users to easily create 360-degree VR content and consume it and share it.

There are other 360-degree VR cameras out there already and others in development, but Samsung’s commitment shows that they are committed to helping move VR forward. This includes pricing it according to what the market is willing to absorb, which means it needs to be $199 or less in order to drive serious volume. My personal experience was that it was better than I expected, but there are still some issues on the mobile HMD side for Samsung Electronics that could still cause nausea. I haven’t used the Gear 360 VR for any extended periods of time, but the short amount of time that I did get at MWC 2016 was a mostly positive experience.

The Future of Wearable Tech

The Future of Wearable Tech
by Raj Kosaraju on 05-09-2016 at 7:00 am
Categories: IoT, Mobile

Today, the wearable device market is a nascent, but growing one. There are about 160 unique wearable devices on the market, and IDTechEx predicts wearables will grow to a $70 billion market in the next ten years. The future of wearables, which includes activity trackers, smartwatches, smartglasses and embedded sensors in clothing, is quickly evolving and changing to reflect technological advances and new products available in the marketplace. Health-related wearables, particularly those for seniors and babies, and for monitoring sleep and health conditions, constituted a large segment of the new devices. The most popular devices will be smartwatches and fitness trackers.

Gartner, Inc. forecasts that 274.6 million wearable electronic devices will be sold worldwide in 2016, an increase of 18.4 percent from 232.0 million units in 2015 (see Table 1). Sales of wearable electronic devices will generate revenue of $28.7 billion in 2016. Of that, $11.5 billion will be from smartwatches.

“From 2015 through 2017, smartwatch adoption will have 48 percent growth largely due to Apple popularizing wearables as a lifestyle trend. Smartwatches have the greatest revenue potential among all wearables through 2019, reaching $17.5 billion,”

Table 1: Forecast for Wearable Devices Worldwide (Millions of Units)
[TABLE]
|-
| Device
| 2015
| 2016
| 2017
|-
| Smartwatch
| 30.32
| 50.40
| 66.71
|-
| Head-mounted display
| 0.14
| 1.43
| 6.31
|-
| Body-worn camera
| 0.05
| 0.17
| 1.05
|-
| Bluetooth headset
| 116.32
| 128.50
| 139.23
|-
| Wristband
| 30.15
| 34.97
| 44.10
|-
| Smart garment
| 0.06
| 1.01
| 5.30
|-
| Chest strap
| 12.88
| 13.02
| 7.99
|-
| Sports watch
| 21.02
| 23.98
| 26.92
|-
| Other fitness monitor
| 21.07
| 21.11
| 25.08
|-
| Total
| 232.01
| 274.59
| 322.69
|-

Source: Gartner (January 2016)

Here are some 10 new opportunities for Wearables Technology in the forthcoming years:

1) Big Opportunity: According to PwC, companies in the EMC industries have perhaps the largest opportunity for advancement and growth in the wearable technology market. Basically, where there’s a screen, there’s an opportunity – and if projections that sales of wearables could reach 130 million units in 2018 are correct, that opportunity is big.

2) Choose a Device by Human Touch: Consumers may need a human touch to help them choose a device and its associated apps. An “apps formulary” of apps vetted by medical teams (and available in a virtual apps pharmacy) could help consumers wade through the thousands of health apps and devices.

3) Social Media Benefit of Wearables: As social media becomes more fundamental to the way we receive information and interact with others, consumers want wearable technology to offer anytime/anywhere access to their favorite networks. This is especially true among millennials, who were three times as likely as the general population to list real-time social media updates as an important benefit of wearables.

4) Chronic diseases led to the growth of wearable technology :The increasing demands from consumers and medical application have also led to the growth of wearable technology in the Americas. Other factors promoting the growth of the market are increasing incidences of chronic diseases, diabetes patients, and ease of use. While fitness bands, smart watches and other wearables are already established in the market, many of them have under-delivered on expectations.

5) Wearable Technology can be used for Capturing Data:Wearable data can be used by insurers and employers to better manage health, wellness and healthcare costs, by pharmaceutical and life sciences companies to run more robust clinical trials, and by healthcare providers to capture data to support outcomes-based reimbursement. The market for wearable technology is on the rise owing to growing demand from younger demographics and the high computing power wearable devices provide in a relatively small and compact size. They have linked their fitness watches, heart monitors and other wearable health devices to an iPhone app that is sending valuable information thousands of miles away. But it will be critical to address the consumer concerns such as cost, privacy, and ease of use.

6) Increasing attention from health-conscious consumers: From smart wristwatches that record heart rates to intelligent bands that track physical activities; wearable technology in the form of fitness monitoring devices attract increasing attention from health-conscious consumers The two main purposes of wearable technology are to monitor various bodily markers and to keep the user connected to the digital world by syncing to parent electronic devices such as smartphones. Within the former, some wearable devices can also compute data gained from the markers they monitor and take actions such as drug delivery in response.

7) Emerging Value Propositions: Many leading companies have already launched smartwatches and wrist bands. It is expected that with major companies foraying into the market such as Apple and Samsung, the look and feel for wearables would increase immensely. Wristband providers are experimenting with how to compete with smartwatches and take market share from the market leader, Fitbit. Examples of emerging value propositions for wristbands beyond fitness include mobile payments, access, safety, wellness and health.

8) Fitness wearables: Include wristbands, smart garments, chest straps, sports watches and other fitness monitors continue to increase in popularity, driven in some part by U.S. wellness programs. In 2016, looking forward smartwatches will have stronger appeal with consumers as they typically have more multifunctional devices that can track exercise.

9) Bringing New Technologies: As trust is a key concern with consumers in the wearables space, enterprises will need to be consistently transparent with what they do with data and how they use it. The technology is based on organic electronics and makes possible the manufacture of flexible displays and sensors. It has applications in a wide range of consumer products including wearables and mobile devices, and industries including automotive, biometrics and healthcare. This technology is not limited to wearable devices. It can be integrated into mobile devices, car interiors, digital signage and other applications that will benefit from creative designs, more functionality and unbreakable screens.

10) Embrace Wearable Technology: To effectively embrace wearable technology, businesses must put the user at the center of the activity, reshaping an entire enterprise and its capabilities system around the customer or user experience. Currently, wearable technology is mostly limited to the wrist, but thanks to flexible electronics it can be transferred to almost any other surface such as clothing, accessories and shoes. From devices and apps that help you track heart rate and food consumption details to gadgets that monitor your mood and even surrounding air, the “quantified self” is a reality for the everyday person.

In Closing,
To effectively embrace wearable technology, businesses must put the user at the center of the activity, reshaping an entire enterprise and its capabilities system around the customer or user experience. I saw a product which not only tells the time, but it has a connected GPS, Fitbit says it will monitor your heart rate and lets you oversee your phone’s music, calendar, texts and caller ID. Enables you from smart shoes that purport to advise you on your “foot strike zone” to a wearable that checks your pulse during workouts. Large-scale investigations using data collected from millions of wearable devices will provide valuable insights that could help cure or manage major diseases. These studies have been made possible because of the advanced gyroscopes, accelerometers, barometers and other sensors contained in modern wearable devices and smartphones.

As market analyst and research firm CSC Insight says sales of wearables will grow from 29 million in 2014 to 172 million in 2018, with a spike in 2015. Fitbit and Jawbone will continue to dominate the wearables market. They expect sales of fitness and activity devices to double in 2016 to 40 million units. The overall market for wearable technology is expected to reach USD 31.27 Billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 17.8% between 2015 and 2020. As with any digital strategy, adopting wearable technology requires taking the long view. It’s looking down a path on which IT is a driving force, directly impacting the technology industry. Wearable tech products are increasingly being designed with business applications in mind, with the promise of improving workplace productivity and the overall efficiency of organizations.

May 8, 2016

Car Leasing, Car Sharing Don’t Mix

Car Leasing, Car Sharing Don’t Mix
by Roger C. Lanctot on 05-08-2016 at 4:00 pm
Categories: Automotive

Not to be outdone by General Motors with its investment in Lyft, its acquisition of Cruise and its launch of Maven, BMW is in the process of relaunching and expanding the DriveNow car share service in the U.S. and may soon provide aftermarket hardware to enable Mini lessees to rent their cars, according to a Bloomberg report.

“BMW to Let Car Owners Rent Out Vehicles Like ‘Airbnb on Wheels”

Bloomberg says Mini plans soon “to make its new cars available with devices that enable owners to rent out their vehicles … the system includes features that accept payment and track the vehicle to make sure the renter doesn’t go for a one-way joyride.” Further details regarding the add-on system were not available, although the functional description is reminiscent of Berlin startup Carzapp’s device for car sharing applications.

The news arrives in connection with the Beijing Auto Show, though it’s not clear what geography will first see the new device. My heart sank, though, when I read the words of a senior Mini executive: “…there’ll be others who’ll love the idea of halving their leasing rate.”

There are some excellent value propositions in car sharing – especially if you own your car. There are some excellent value propositions in car leasing – especially if you like driving a new car every 2-3 years. But leasing and sharing do not go together.

Leasing is a very popular option for drivers of German luxury cars. According to U.S. car shopping service Cartelligent the Mini Hardtop is the fifth most frequently leased vehicle. It is exceeded in leasing popularity by the BMW 3 Series – third most frequently leased (70%), according to Cartelligent.

Leasing is on the rise in the U.S. according to figures shared last year by Experian. Some leasing analysts have noted that the typical 2-3-year leases are starting to extend to four and five years.

Leasing a car is one of those things that your friends and family members tell you to NEVER DO! I usually listen to that advice, but since I have a BMW in a long-term lease right now, I can tell you I did not listen and I am not happy and I watch my car’s mileage carefully. I do not want to get dinged for per-mile charges over and above my annual limit.

By the way, I am also notorious (to my wife and sons) for parking in remote areas of parking lots – not wanting to acquire any door dents or rim scrapes that might crop up during the inspection when I return the vehicle at the end of the lease. Can a lessee count on a car sharer to be so careful with the vehicle? I don’t think so.

Share it if you own it, not if you lease it, I say.

Adding an aftermarket device to a leased Mini or BMW is the equivalent of attaching an explosive device to the customer’s credit report. It is not a good idea. It is not a good business model. It is not a good marketing practice.

If the test of Mini car sharing goes well, Bloomberg reports, BMW will expand the offer to the parent brand. It’s all part of BMW’s larger plan to become a mobility company. It may take time for a determination to be reached regarding the program’s success, but I can say without equivocation: car leasing and car sharing do not mix. It’s only hip up until the point that someone bends a rim.

Roger C. Lanctot is Associate Director in the Global Automotive Practice at Strategy Analytics. More details about Strategy Analytics can be found here: https://www.strategyanalytics.com/access-services/automotive#.VuGdXfkrKUk

May 8, 2016September 1, 2024

Why is NXP Moving to FD-SOI?

Why is NXP Moving to FD-SOI?
by Ron Martino on 05-08-2016 at 11:00 am
Categories: Arm, EDA, FD-SOI, Foundries, IP, Samsung Foundry

The latest generations of power efficient and full-featured applications processors in NXP’s very successful and broadly deployed i.MX platform are being manufactured on 28nm FD-SOI. The new i.MX 7 series leverages the 32-bit ARM v7-A core, targeting the general embedded, e-reader, medical, wearable and IoT markets, where power efficiency is paramount. The i.MX 8 series leverages the 64-bit ARM v8-A series, targeting automotive applications, especially driver information systems, as well as high-performance general embedded and advanced graphics applications.

Over 200 million i.MX SOCs have been shipped over six product generations since the i.MX line was first launched (by Freescale) in 2001. They’re in over 35 million vehicles today, are leaders in e-readers and pervasive in the general embedded space. But the landscape for the markets targeted by the i.MX 7 and i.MX 8 product lines are changing radically. While performance needs to be high, the real name of the game is power efficiency.

Why are we moving to FD-SOI?

The bottom line in chip manufacturing is always cost. A move from 28nm HKMG to 14nm FinFET would entail up to a 50% cost increase. Would it be worth it? While FinFETs do boast impressive power-performance figures, for applications processors targeting IoT, embedded and automotive, we need to look beyond those figures, taking into account:

when and how performance is needed and how it is used;
when power savings are most pertinent;
how RF and analog characteristics are integrated;
the environmental conditions under which the chip will be operating;
and of course the overall manufacturing risks.

In fact, both NXP and the former Freescale have extremely deep SOI expertise. Freescale developed over 20 processors based on partially-depleted SOI over the last decade; and NXP, having pioneered SOI technology for high-voltage applications, has dozens of SOI-based product lines. So we all understand how SOI can help us strategically leverage power and performance. For us, FD-SOI is just the latest SOI technology, this time with a design flow almost identical to bulk, but on ultra-thin SOI wafers and some important additional perks like back-biasing.

When all the factors we care about for the new i.MX processor families are tallied up, FD-SOI comes out a clear winner for i.MX SOCs.

FD-SOI: Designing for Power, Performance and more!

For our designers, here’s why FD-SOI is the right solution to the engineering challenges they faced in meeting evolving market needs.

In terms of power, you can lower the supply voltage (Vdd) – so you’re pulling less power from your energy source – and still get excellent performance. Add to that the dynamic back-biasing techniques (forward back-bias improves performance, while reverse back-bias reduces leakage) available with FD-SOI (but not with FinFETs), you get a very large dynamic operating range.

By dramatically reducing leakage, reverse back-biasing (RBB) gives you good power-performance at very low voltages and a wide range of temperatures. This is particularly important for IoT products, which will spend most of their time in very low-power standby mode followed by short bursts of performance-intense activity. We can meet the requirements for those high-performance instances with forward back-biasing (FBB) techniques. And because we can apply back-biasing dynamically, we can specify it to meet changing workload requirements on the fly.

Devices for IoT also have major analog and RF elements, which do not scale nearly so well as the digital parts of the chip. Furthermore analog and RF elements are very sensitive to voltage variations. It is important that the RF and analog blocks of the chip are not affected by the digital parts of a chip, which undergo strong, sudden signal switching. The major concerns for our analog/RF designers include gain, matching, variability, noise, power dissipation, and resistance. Traditionally they’ve used specialized techniques, but FD-SOI makes their job much easier and results in superior analog performance.

In terms of RF, FD-SOI greatly simplifies the integration of RF blocks for WiFi, Bluetooth or Zigbee, for example, into an SOC.

Soft error rates (SER)* are another important consideration, especially as the size and density of SOC memory arrays keep increasing. Bulk technology gets worse SER results with each technology node, while FD-SOI provides ever better SER reliability with each geometry shrink. In fact, 28nm FD-SOI provides 10 to 100 times better immunity to soft-errors than its bulk counterpart.

Our process development strategy has always been to leverage foundry standard technology and adapt it for our targeted applications, with a focus on differentiating technologies for performance and features. We typically reuse about 80% of our technology platform, and own our intellectual property (IP). Looking at the ease of porting existing platform technology and IP, and analyzing die size vs. die cost, again, FD-SOI came out the clear choice.

In terms of manufacturing, FD-SOI is a lower-risk solution. Integration is simpler, and turnaround time (TAT) is much faster. 28nm FD-SOI is a planar technology, so it’s lower complexity and extends our 28nm installed expertise base. Throughout the design cycle, we’ve worked closely with our foundry partner, Samsung. They provided outstanding support, and very quickly reached excellent yield levels, which is of course paramount for the rapid ramp we anticipate on these products.

In the second part of this article, we’ll take a look at the new i.MX product lines, and why FD-SOI is helping us make those game-changing plays for specific markets.

By Ronald M. Martino, Vice President, i.MX Applications Processor and Advanced Technology Adoption, NXP Semiconductors

Also read:Why NXP is Moving to FD-SOI (Part II)

May 8, 2016

IoT Devices Making Inroads into Semicon Revenue

IoT Devices Making Inroads into Semicon Revenue
by Pawan Fangaria on 05-08-2016 at 7:00 am
Categories: Foundries, IoT

Last year IC Insights forecasted IOT semiconductor growth rate to be around 19% CAGR for next five years. And within that space, the O-S-D (Optoelectronics, Sensors, and Discrete) semiconductors were expected to grow at a CAGR of 26%, one among the fastest. In 2015, the O-S-D revenue was at $66.6 billion, i.e. ~19% of total semiconductor industry revenue of $353.7 billion. The share of O-S-D revenue in the total semiconductor revenue will continue to be around 20% until 2020. The CMOS image sensors and sensors in general within the O-S-D space command significant share of revenue and they are essential components of IOT devices. We have started seeing an impressive growth rate in revenue from sensors.

Although the overall semiconductor growth rate is moving at snail’s pace, the worldwide CMOS image sensor revenue grew 12% in 2015 to $9.9 billion, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9% for at least another 5 years to reach $15.2 billion in 2020. The image sensor CAGR was higher at 17% in the last five years (2010-15), driven by embedded cameras in phones and other image recognition systems. However, the future trend reveals the growth in image sensors coming from elsewhere and not from cameras phones. On an absolute scale, the camera phones keep the lion’s share of total image sensor revenue, but that will decrease gradually.

It’s interesting to analyze how CMOS image sensors which get into devices to realize IoT applications are cutting the pie of revenue from camera phones. The share of revenue from camera phone image sensors will decrease from 70% of total image sensors revenue in 2015 to 48% of total image sensors revenue in 2020. In absolute terms, the revenue of image sensors from camera phones will grow at a mere 1% CAGR to $7.3 billion in 2020. This is the beauty of semiconductor industry that when Smartphone market is maturing, there are other market segments which are growing to keep the overall semiconductor revenue afloat.

The largest growth in CMOS image sensors is expected to come from automotive industry at a CAGR of 55% reaching $2.2 billion in 2020; that amounts to ~14% of total image sensors revenue. The automotive industry is poised for a big push towards safety from collisions, autonomous driving, video-recording of crashes, rear-view cameras, and so on. All of these require image sensors.

The next major growth in image sensors is expected to come from security and surveillance applications at a CAGR of 36%, and then from medical and scientific applications at a CAGR of 34%. The other areas include industrial systems, video games, and so on; all with double digit CAGR.

Clearly, the IoT connectivity between different devices will increase the usage of image sensors in the ecosystem and that will lead to higher growth in the revenue from image sensors. Although starting with low base, the absolute revenue from image sensors in each of these areas will eventually increase considerably.

What are the other devices witnessing double digit growth rates? They are again related to IoT. Another IC Insight report on O-S-D product categories states about ‘Lamp Devices’ growth rate at 14% in 2015 reaching record revenue of $14.3 billion. There are other devices such as ‘Laser Transmitters’ and ‘Infrared Devices’ which are exhibiting double digit growth rates.

Apple should buy Tesla and appoint Elon Musk as CEO!

Apple should buy Tesla and appoint Elon Musk as CEO!
by Vivek Wadhwa on 05-07-2016 at 7:00 am
Categories: Automotive, Mobile

Apple’s dismal earnings announcement shows why it badly needs to rethink its innovation model and leadership. Its last breakthrough innovation was the iPhone — which was released in 2007. Since then, Apple has simply been tweaking its componentry, adding faster processors and more advanced sensors, and playing with its size — making it bigger in the iPad and smaller in the Apple Watch. Chief executive Tim Cook is probably one of the most competent operations executives in the industry but is clearly not a technology visionary. Apple needs another Steve Jobs to reinvent itself otherwise it will join the ranks of HP and Compaq.

That Steve Jobs may be Elon Musk—who has proven to be the greatest visionary of our times.

In the same period that Apple released the iPhone and successors, Musk developed two generations of world-changing electric vehicles; perfected a new generation of battery technologies; and released first-generation autonomous driving capabilities. And that was in Tesla Motors. In his other company, SpaceX, Musk developed a spacecraft, docked it with the International Space Station, and returned with cargo. He’s launched two rockets to space that have made vertical landings back on Earth — one on a helicopter-like pad and another on a ship in the ocean. Musk is also developing the Hyperloop, a high-speed transportation system in which pressurized capsules ride on an air cushion driven by linear induction motors and air compressors. In discussions that I had with him in 2012, Musk told me that his ambition was to build a space station and retire on Mars. He wasn’t joking, I expect he will do this.

Apple has reportedly been developing an electric vehicle because it sees a car as an iPhone on wheels. It is conceivable that it will demonstrate something like this in the next five to 10 years. But Tesla already has this technology — and it is amazing. I have likened my Tesla Model S to a spaceship that travels on land. I consider it to be better than any Apple product — because it is more complex, elegant, and better designed than anything that Apple offers.

Apple should buy Tesla and appoint Elon Musk as CEO…

Would Musk be interested in being part of Apple when Tesla is on top of the world? Tesla just received nearly $20 billion in orders for its Model 3 — a record for any product in history. Musk reportedly turned down an acquisition offer from Google in 2013 when it was on the verge of bankruptcy. Why would he consider such an offer now, from Apple?

My guess is that he would do this — if he were offered the chief executive role. A combination of an operations executive such as Cook and a visionary such as Musk would be formidable. Apple’s vast resources would allow Tesla to scale up his operations to deliver the nearly 400,000 orders it has received for the Model 3. Tesla would be able to leverage Apple’s global distribution network and incorporate many new technologies. Musk would be able to pursue his dream projects while Cook worried about delivery and detail.

And Cook would get the visionary that Apple badly needs, someone who is even a cut above Steve Jobs. The markets would rejoice and take Apple stock to a level higher than anything it has seen before. Consider that Tesla’s market cap of $33 billion is eminently affordable by Apple, which has reserves of more than $200 billion. And Apple lost $47 billion in valuation with its earnings announcement Tuesday, which is more than it would likely cost to acquire Tesla.

This could be a marriage made in heaven. We would get world changing innovations as well as our space colonies.

Below is an interview I did with Tyler Mathisen of CNBC Power Lunch about this. More on my website: www.wadhwa.com or follow me on Twitter: @wadhwa.