Google’s modular phone to bypass wearables
For any semiconductor chip vendor, for any sensor manufacturer, without having to competitively fight their way into new “design wins” with one of the top leading smartphone manufacturers, there will always be room into swappable modules for the Ara modular smartphone.
In fact, for startups and non-mobile companies, such a modular concept dramatically lowers the barrier to entry into smartphones, since any given module could be produced in any given volume without any binding contract to whoever would produce the connecting endoskeleton.
Depending on the modules they would plug into the backplane, users could decide to turn their phone into a DJ set, or make it more of a portable medical analysis instrument, or just boost the augmented reality or gaming capability of their smartphone with dedicated dual camera and graphics processing modules.
For many manufacturers of wearable devices, the wide adoption of an open-source modular smartphone concept could mean a shift from selling standalone products (often used as smartphone peripherals anyway) to simplified swappable modules performing the same functionalities, but only when needed.
The Ara modular smartphone could certainly kill a fair number of standalone wearable applications, or it could boost differentiation, enticing companies not only to building their original full spec wearable product, but also a trimmed-down version (no screen, less battery, less processing power) that plugs into the modular smartphone. Users could then decide what’s fit for them and how much extra they are willing to pay for yet another battery-operated standalone device.
By publicly adopting the MIPI UniPort-M protocol for its Project Ara Module Developers Kit (MDK), Google is further simplifying the design entry into its modular smartphone. The MIPI UniPort-M interface is a combination of the MIPI UniPro (Unified Protocol) transport layer with the MIPI M-PHY.
The interface optimized for short-reach high bandwidth chip-to-chip communications in mobile platforms is conceived as a universally capable channel.
It is hailed by the MIPI Alliance as an interface designed to be implemented far beyond smartphones, ready to bridge the smartphone’s display and communication capabilities to peripheral applications and wearables (and vice-versa) from many industries, including from the automotive world, the medical world, and from the industrial world.
If Project Ara ever meets Google’s target to put modular smartphones in the hands of 5 billion people, with many more pluggable modules to customize them, that will make an awful lot of MIPI UniPort-M interfaces to ship.
A partner of the project, Toshiba sees there a huge ASIC market for MIPI Unipro-compliant bridge ICs.
Senior VP & Technology Executive at Toshiba America’s System LSI Group, Shardul Kazi presented the company’s Ara roadmap during the Google Project Ara Developer Conference held mid-April. Kazi sees Project Ara as an opportunity to expand Toshiba’s presence in the mobile market.
Since November last year, Toshiba has been working with Google to develop new IP for the modular smartphone’s endoskeleton. This includes a switch IC to be part of the endoskeleton, which would be able to redirect data from any module plugged onto the endoskeleton to any other, and two bridge ASICs which would ensure the conversion from legacy and current data formats of the modular applications to the MIPI UniPro unified interface.
Kazi unveiled the future AP Bridge (application processor), combining CSI/DSI interfaces, a Host Bust Interface, I2C, I2S and GPIOs on one side for modules featuring an application processor, a display, a camera, a microphone or a speaker, a secondary display, with a UniPro layer on the other side.
The GP Bridge, a general purpose bridge IC is aimed at modules such as WiFi, Bluetooth, Modems, GPS, memory cards, SIMs. It combines HSIC (host) and SDIO (master) ports with UART, I2C, I2S, EPM and GPIOs on one side and the Unipro layer on the other side.
The company expects its first engineering samples by Q4 of 2014, with commercial samples ready early next year for module developers. The idea is to take the complexity of Unipro out of the developers’ hand, so they can focus on new applications with the interfaces they are comfortable with.
Toshiba will also push its own reference modules into the market, planning a computational array camera reference module (packing two 5MPix cameras and a pre-processor chip) in a one by two 20x40mm unit, less than 5mm high. The video module could be used to perform all sorts of augmented reality type of applications such as depth mapping, gesture operation, object extraction, refocus.
A dissassembled modular smartphone prototype showing the backplane and different modules.
Other reference modules the Japanese company is working on include a close proximity wireless reference design using 560Mps-capable Transfer Jet technology (at up to 3cm), and an activity meter reference module.
The activity meter module is something that would exemplify the modular cannibalization of wearables by Project Ara. Kazi described a one-by-one module packed with an ARM Cortex-M4F processor, Bluetooth Low Energy and multiple axis motion sensors. Of course the unit would fit into the modular smartphone backplane as an add-on, but alternatively, it could also be clipped to a wristband, becoming a wearable peripheral again.
Then, the same cost and optimisation race could happen among module providers as it has been the case for the complete smartphones, with companies competing at module level. This could bring more tier pricing models, ranging from cheap near-empty modules (including customized cosmetic ones, coloured carcasses, mini-aquariums, squishy foam pads etc..), to very densely packed units for more processing power, more radio combinations etc…
Visit Project Ara at www.projectara.com
Visit MIPI Alliance at www.mipi.org
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