IoT won’t work with ‘one-size-fits-all’ processors
The example of the connected home provides evidence of this. According to research estimates gathered from ABI Research, TechNavio, Pike Research, and BI Intelligence, connected-home devices will take a variety of forms:
- Energy devices: smart thermostats, smart lighting,
- Safety/security: monitor, cameras, alarm, and
- Smart appliances: washers, dryers, refrigerators
Each of these categories as well as individual products within the categories will need unique processing requirement to meet the cost, power, and performance provisions of their individual applications. Besides the smart home, healthcare, automotive and industrial fields will also demand individually unique embedded computing solutions.
One design that illustrates the unique computing requirement of an IoT device is the electronic shelf label (ESL). Retailers use the ESL to display product information and price on their shelves. A liquid crystal display or other technology, such as electronic paper attached to the front edge of a retail shelf, displays the product information. The product pricing and other information displayed on an ESL is automatically updated whenever changes occur.
Embedded computer requirements for IoT devices, such as the ESL, include security, communications, sensing and control, and power management. Security is essential to prevent network attacks as well as physical attacks and to protect against software/firmware theft. Communications requires megabytes of processing to handle proprietary or standard protocols such as RFID, 802.15.4, Bluetooth Smart, Bluetooth 4.1, WiFi 802.11 ah, and LTE Cat-0.
Processing a variety of sensor data coming from the control interface requires versatile DSP capabilities. And power management is essential to enable months to years of operation on small batteries or harvested energy, thus demanding processors with efficient power management for long sleep cycles, fast power-up/power-down, and the ability to operate at varying clock frequencies—to sip energy rather than full-on or full-off.
To serve this range of requirements, embedded processors need to provide general-purpose computing with high performance-efficiency and flexible power consumption. They must offer DSP computing capabilities such as SIMD (single instruction multiple data) processing to efficiently handle the wide range of sensors operating with these IoT devices.
Finally, these embedded processors need to be extensible to allow application specific acceleration and added security. This is the architecture approach that Andes created in its new generation of embedded processors developed in 2006 and enhanced over time since then to adapt to IoT application needs.
While having an elegant architecture addresses the problem on paper, the real solution results from being able to realize the complete solution in a final IoT device. As a CPU IP supplier, Andes provides a complete pre-integrated low-power SoC IP development platform to help realize compact code size, low power, and secure debug.
Over the remainder of this decade, SoC designs to implement Internet of Things devices will proliferate. These IoT designs will differ greatly from those going into mobile devices of today. IoT chips will require an order of magnitude less power consumption, while still demanding high performance and a minimal silicon footprint. Only CPU cores based on next-generation architectural features such as those from Andes Technology can hope to meet these stringent requirements.
About the author:
Charlie Su is CTO and Senior Vice President of R&D at Andes Technology Corporation – www.andestech.com
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