November 2013

Semiconductor Intellectual Property (SIP) is facilitating tremendous growth in the semiconductor industry.  Jim Feldhan, President of Semico Research, delivered the kickoff address of the Semico IP Impact Conference, attended by over 150 people.

One of Feldhan’s key messages was that portability will continue to reshape technology and our lives.  Today, eight percent of resources are directed towards creating content while 91% are about using content.  This is especially prevalent in the mobile market, which surpassed the traditional computing market in 2008.  Tablets will outsell notebooks by the end of this year.  And, by 2017, Semico is projecting that the tablet and notebook form factors will become indistinguishable.

Another message was how the residential market will be impacted by the Internet of Things.  Today the average home has over 70 appliances and devices, which could be internet-connected in the future.  This will create an $18 billion market for internet-connected appliances in 2017 which will contain over $160 billion in semiconductors in those appliances.

There are two common terms when describing sensors.  One is “degree of freedom” (DOF) and the other is “axis.”   They're often used synonymously, originating when accelerometers, vibration sensors and tilt sensors were first used in industrial and military applications for monitoring movement, such as a robotic arm or a space craft.  Yet, they don't mean the same thing.  Technically, a DoF is a parameter that determines the state of a physical system and it takes six numbers to characterize a movement. 

So, six degrees of freedom indicates the sensors track up and down, side to side, forward and backward, pitch, roll, and yaw.  A device can really only have a maximum of 6 DOF, because there are only 6 degrees of freedom in a 3D space.  When a company claims a higher DOF (like 9), they’re really implying a higher degree of accuracy within the linear and angular 3D space.

Which means the more accurate term when discussing sensors is "axis."

The axis term refers to the X, Y, and Z axis, so a 1-axis sensor most likely goes up and down on a Y axis or side to side on a X axis.  A 3-axis sensor would track on all three axes.  A sensor platform that is said to have 9, 10, or 12-axes indicates that it tracks multiple data points along the X, Y, and Z axes. The number of axes a device is said to have can be as high as the developer wants - as long as each additional axis tracks data along one of the x, y, or z axes, it can be added on to the total. 

Microchip has announced an addition to its 32-bit MCU line of PIC32 called the PIC32MZ Embedded Connectivity (EC) family.  The PIC32 is based on the MIPS architecture.  The new PIC32MZ is Microchip’s first MCU to feature Imagination’s MIPS microAptiv™ core.

The microAptiv core adds 159 new DSP instructions that enable the execution of DSP algorithms at up to 75% fewer cycles than the PIC32MX families.  Microchip has tripled the performance over its previous generation reaching 330 DMIPS.  The microMIPS instruction set also enables improved code density for the PIC32MZ.

Microchip has integrated a large number of peripherals, mostly to support high speed connectivity: Hi-Speed USB, 10/100 Ethernet MAC, 2 CAN 2.0b modules, 6 UART, 6 SPI / I²S, 5 I²C™ and SQI (Serial Quad Interface).  The SQI supports high-speed interface to external Flash.  Integrated onto the PIC32MZ is up to 2MB of Live-Update Flash.  This is the Flash technology Microchip acquired with SST.

The PIC32MZ targets a broad range of applications which include automation (factory, building and home), consumer audio, automotive, security, power meters and cloud computing. 

Healthcare has been changing in big ways.  These days, a good system can monitor a patient and then use that data to enact behavioral change for an entire society.  Changing society for the better is basically the end goal of Big Data.  

Big Data in healthcare means mining personal data that can be applied either to personal care or combined with large demographic segments to spot trends and improve care to either cure or manage disease and sickness or to change behavior in a positive way.  

For example, technology like Dexcom’s glucose monitor, watches blood sugar levels every five minutes for five days, and is approved by the FDA.  Since controlling sugar is so important, someone who is diabetic can now send complete data to their doctor.  This is something patients have never before been able to do.  This constant stream of data is “Big Data” in that, even if there isn’t a cure, disease and sickness can still be managed by understanding our smallest reactions to daily stimulus.  

This becomes predictive modeling, which means decreased health costs, and implies an upcoming data deluge.  It is possible to get a trillion GB of data for each individual.  The amount can be astronomical, and apps will need to sift through the data to get to the relevant and actionable data (Market Opportunity for new Tech).