You know we live in astonishing times when you can start your car by talking into your phone. But the era of the Internet of Everything--for all the great technology it has begun to enable--is filled with challenges for electronics design engineers.
Consider:
- Bill of materials, especially for tiny and ubiquitous IoT nodes, need to shrink if the market is going to expand. Five-dollar BOMs will not unlock big market opportunities, so the pressure on miniaturization, integration, and more efficient design will only increase.
- IoT is an energy-driven application space. The premium on battery life and power management for devices will be exceptional; the focus on operations per watt is extraordinary.
- Since innovative software sitting atop silicon platforms has opened up the possibility for more startups, the competition to be the first to market is higher (more significant as well in a world in which many IoT devices will have a short revenue and profitability window before being displaced by the next thing)
- The need to future-proof your design to hedge against the relentless change swirling around any given IoT application space is more than ever
- If we think security is a major concern today with phone hacking, imagine the challenge when billions of nodes are potential gateways without bulletproof security
- And unfortunately for electronics designers, the dawn of the natural user interface era comes after years of technology breakthroughs (think Siri, Google Now). Those successes have created consumer expectations that only heap onto today's design teams more time-to-market pressures for tomorrow's solutions.
Just a portion of the IoT--the smart home's systems of systems (pictured below)--gives you a sense of the challenge ahead.
What's Old Isn't New Again
How do we get there from here? As an ecosystem-as fabless semiconductor vendors, EDA and IP companies-we get there by enabling the system-design aspirations of companies.
These companies increasingly want to differentiate at the highest levels of the
design flow: the system level, the software level. It's where they add value.
Application-driven system design enables that. We've seen it in server design
among a new class of systems houses designing their own. The approach is just
as valid in the IoT. But this demands nothing less than a reconsideration of
traditional electronics systems design.
For IoT and specifically natural human interface design, the answer isn't"specify-the-MCU-and-ship-it." There just isn't a single controller architecture that meets all IoT requirements, such as multiple sensor, innovative user experience, and wireless protocol support plus various security requirements.
And if that's not the answer, do we just lean on other traditional processor architectures and approaches? We can't because they aren't necessarily broadly applicable in the IoT.
The answer lies in flexibility of design and design choices, but how we get there from here requires a completely new post. Stay tuned!
Seow Yin Lim
(Seow Yin Lim is the Group Director of Marketing for Cadence's IP Group and is responsible for driving Cadence's Internet of Things (IoT) strategy. Lim, who has worked at leading SoC companies, will blog about the challenges and opportunities in the global IoT market).
Related stories:
--- IoT Focus: Natural User Interface Design Crucial to Success
--- Upcoming Webinar: SoC Verification Challenges in the IoT Age