Recalling the top ten news in the embedded market in 2011 in the Chinese market

Introduction: Embedded technology is the most extensive technology covering billions of electronic terminals. In 2011, there were many shocking and happy events in the field, and even events that will change the game rules and design concepts of the entire electronics industry. Summarized the top ten news events and commented on the far-reaching impact on the electronics industry.

1. ARM announced a number of core chips, redefining the traditional power-performance relationship.

This year ARM not only released the Cortex-A7 MPCore, big, the most power-efficient application processor ever. The LITTLE processing solution and the Mali T658 graphics core also weigh heavily on the ARMV8 64-bit instruction set architecture. Among them, Cortex-A7 adopts 28nm process technology, the area is smaller than 0.5mm2. ARM said that in 2013 or 2014, by using the Cortex-A7 as a stand-alone processor, entry-level smartphones under $100 will be able to provide the processing power equivalent to the current $500 high-end smartphone; LITTLE processing (also called a small- and large-size processor) is the first to optimize the combination of a high-performance Cortex-A15 MPCore processor and an ultra-efficient Cortex-A7 processor to extend the battery life of smart devices. The birth of the V8 64-bit instruction set allows ARM processors to get involved in 64-bit computing areas that could not be covered before, such as high-end workstations and servers, opening a new application area for ARM and challenging Intel in the server market.

2. Intel's four major departments restructured and transformed, Ultrabooks will rewrite the history of personal computers. In late 2011, Intel announced that it was about to recombine multiple business units. This made the embedded field renewed. The news said that Intel will set up a new mobile and communications department, responsible for the company's smart phones, tablet computers and wireless communications business. The reorganization will integrate the mobile communications, netbook/tablet, mobile wireless and ultra-mobile business units into the same department, led by former Palm executive Mike Bell and former Infineon Wireless president Hermann Eul. This shows that Intel is trying to "accelerate and improve the development of Intel's mobile devices," from the simplification of tablet PCs, mobile phone software development work, to the development of system-on-chip (SoC) in the mobile space.

At the same time, Intel put forward the concept of Ultrabook in 2011. Instead of the new laptops that are “thin, ultra-long standby, always online, fast-start and touch screen, but also work and entertainment”, they have not been replaced for years. Big change in the field of traditional laptops. Its CEO publicly stated that such ultrabook computers will account for more than 40% of their laptop shipments next year, which will be an important innovation in the history of notebook computers. The world's first 22nm CPU with 3D transistor technology, ivy Bridge, will be an important driving force for low-power ultrabooks.

3. FPGA vendors broke into the MPU market, beginning in the 28nm era in 2011, the two giants of the FPGA market also released FPGA engineering samples using the latest generation of 28nm technology, indicating that the FPGA officially entered the 28nm era. Another important event was that both Xilinx and Altera entered the general-purpose MPU market this year. The introduction of the FPGA+ARM Cortex A9 embedded processor is different from the previous integration of CPU cores in the FPGA. This is a major strategic shift. The platforms Xilinx's Zynq and Altera's FPGA SoCs directly address the traditional MPU market and challenge general DSPs and MPUs.

In addition, Xilinx also introduced 28nm FPGAs using the so-called 2.5D stacking process, enabling Xilinx to quickly introduce ultra-large-scale FPGA devices in the latest generation of technologies to meet high-end applications, partially solving the bottleneck of Moore's Law. For example, a single packaged FPGA can integrate 6.8 billion transistors or 2 million LEs.

4. Tegra 2 and Tegra 3 of nVidia are mavericks and are mixed. In Tegra2, they have gained a lot of reputation and gained a lot of saliva. nVidia is once again maverick and launches Tegra 3, the world’s first quad-core processor. Tegra 3 is manufactured on TSMC's 40nm process, with a single-core up to 1.4GHz and CPU performance up to 5 times that of Tegra 2, claiming to have reached the PC level. Internally integrated with 12-core GeForce GPUs, GPU performance is 3 times that of Tegra 2, and supports 3D stereoscopic display. The first tablet product to carry Tegra 3 is ASUS's Eee Pad Transformer Prime. Whoever eats this crab in a smartphone is still unknown. Before on Tegra2, Tianyu's cloud phone was not too successful.

5. Local processor manufacturers in the flat-panel market have finally begun to accumulate in the Tablet PC strategy of international OEM manufacturers have failed, China's local tablet PC manufacturers, with the help of local Rockchip, Quan Zhi and Jun Zheng IC companies cost-effective application Processors, which broke out in the last two quarters, are thick and thin, because these manufacturers, especially Fuzhou Rockchip, have not entered the tablet market later than many international processor manufacturers. They have also been doing market cultivation. According to preliminary statistics, the total number of shipments of these local tablet PCs will reach 15 million units this year, and this will continue until next year.

This time, the success is mainly in the improvement of hardware and software performance. For example, the mainstream program of Rockchip and Quanzhi is already based on the Cortext A8 core, clocked at 1Ghz, and Rockchip is the first to upgrade to support Android 4.0 in China; Supports 1Ghz and supports Android4.0. Of course, the price is the catalyst for the outbreak of demand. Such tablet PCs with 1G clock speed have sold for 499 yuan (7-inch screen).

6. TI shocks $5 to launch Cortext A8 processor, looking for grassroots market to ship in early November, TI made a shocking move to the electronics industry, announced the latest Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 microprocessor, bulk sales price $ 5, and also introduced the ultra-cheap $ 89 easy-to-use open source hardware platform and free software development kit. Both prices can be said to have broken the game rules of the current industry. Industry colleagues called "shock!". However, at the same time as expressing shock, the vast majority showed great excitement. "The good news is that TI finally opened its doors to general enterprises." TI also said that the AM335x is used, users can simultaneously save the cost of peripherals and the cost of the main chip, and its BOM is about 40 dollars lower than the mainstream in the market. . This is not the case. It depends on the performance of this processor next year.

The main market of this processor is located in portable navigation systems, handheld games and educational equipment, and home/building automation. It is obviously the market that has the most fierce price competition to attack and the largest number of local IC companies. However, these markets are also a relatively significant market for shipments. It seems that TI not only has high profits, but also has great pressure on high volume shipments. After offering mobile phone baseband market, TI has not found a single one in the digital IC market. With comparable fields, the consumer electronics market can be considered one.

7. LSI promotes the rapid transition of cloud computing to SSDs. SSD/HDD hybrid control is favored With the increasing demand for storage capacity and efficiency from the cloud, the industry urgently needs data center development from HDD to SSD. But the cost of the latter is too high. From the current data, the cost per unit of GB/GB, HDD is 1 US dollar, SSD is 10 US dollars, and the cost is 100 times. Although the price of SSDs will drop at a rate of 30% per year, the high cost is still a major factor constraining its development. LSI proposed a new approach this year: SSD+HDD hybrid solution. The flash controller optimizes and provides new middleware through software, and controls SSD and HDD at the same time. Customers can use SSD at high performance according to their needs. Others adopt it. HDD not only guarantees low cost but also achieves high performance. LSI claims that this hybrid storage networking mode has been favored and adopted by Facebook and China's famous Internet companies.

8. Broadcom and Intel withdrew from the TV chip market, and the size of Taiwanese M companies further expanded into the fourth quarter. Broadcom and Intel announced that they would withdraw from the digital TV chip market almost as soon as Intel and European companies almost completely withdrew from the highly competitive and unprofitable TV chip market. This will leave the current market, which is still shipping 200 million units a year, to Asian manufacturers, especially IC manufacturers in Taiwan, China, Mstar and MTK. In fact, this market, whether it is market share or technology, is already the leading company in Taiwan M.

On the eve of National Day 2011, Mstar took the lead in achieving the full listing of single-chip Android smart TVs in four major domestic color TV brands. Next year, Mstar will shift from the current MIPS platform to the ARM platform on high-end smart TVs. In early 2012, it will launch single-core and dual-core A9 series, dual-core and even quad-core GPU single-chip Android smart TV solutions, will enhance the performance of smart TVs to The faster, more ambiguous, and stronger position enables Smart TVs to support more novel applications and interactions. On the other hand, MTK's 3D TV single-chip solution is also widely supported by customers worldwide. Currently, it has been adopted by several well-known first-line TV brands such as Sharp, Skyworth, TCL, Hisense, Haier and Changhong.

9. NXP Releases Cortex-M4+M0 Dual-Core Microcontroller, Changes Design Concept The LPC4300 is by far the industry's fastest ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller with speeds up to 204MHz and is manufactured using ultra-low 90nm leakage current technology. Its DSP functions and floating-point operations enable embedded engineers to seamlessly upgrade the LPC1800 and LPC4300 for a variety of applications including embedded audio, high-end motor control, industrial automation, POS machines, medical devices and automotive accessories. The LPC4300 is also the industry's first dual-core asymmetric architecture DSC with a Cortex-M0 coprocessor. Among them, Cortex-M0 shares a large number of control and I/O processing tasks, and Cortex-M4 spares no effort to handle digital computations in digital signal control applications.

10. The all-silicon MEMS clock will bring about tremendous changes in electronic products. We all have a dream to make electronic products all consist of "sand"-"silicon". Now we are getting closer and closer to this dream, but one of them is very Obstinate devices - crystals and clocks have always been made of materials such as quartz that are not easily mass produced and are not easily miniaturized. SiTime, a spin-off company from the old Bosch (Bosch), launched a challenge six years ago to replace the traditional quartz crystal with an all-silicon-based MEMS clock, but it has not yet entered the high-end crystal market. This year, they introduced silicon oscillators into the high-end server market, which can replace the very high temperature and crystal oscillators used in the telecommunication and wireless communications market. This represents a new milestone because these areas were previously It is considered impossible to achieve by MEMS clock technology. Next year, their silicon MEMS crystal will enter the mobile phone and other consumer electronics market.

This is a major milestone for the electronics market. Several decades ago we replaced the transistor with a chip. We used a variety of memory products to replace the disk and film more than ten years ago. Now we need to replace the traditional quartz oscillator with a true all-silicon MEMS-based semiconductor device. This will be Another major change in human lifestyles.