Leading companies within critical industry segments answer questions about the state of technology preparedness for the Internet-of-Things.
BY ED KORCZYNSKI, Senior Technical Editor
The Internet-of-Things (IoT) is expected to add new sensing and communications to improve the functionality of all manner of things in the world: bridges sensing and reporting when repairs are needed, parts automatically informing where they are in storage and transport, human health monitoring, etc. Solid-state and semiconducting materials for new integrated circuits (IC) intended for ubiquitous IoT appli- cations will have to be assembled at low-cost and small- size in High Volume Manufacturing (HVM). Micro-Electro- Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and other sensors are being combined with Radio-Frequency (RF) ICs in miniaturized packages for the first wave of growth in major sub-markets.
To meet the anticipated needs of the different IoT application spaces, we asked leading companies within critical industry segments about the state of technology preparedness:
- Commercial IC HVM – GLOBALFOUNDRIES,
- Electronic Design Automation (EDA) – Cadence and Mentor Graphics,
- IC and complex system test – Presto Engineering.
Korczynski: Today, ICs for IoT applications typically use 45nm/65nm-node which are “Node -3” (N-3) compared to sub-20nm-node chips in HVM. Five years from now, when the bleeding-edge will use 10nm node technology, will IoT chips still use N-3 of 28nm-node (considered a “long-lived node”) or will 45nm-node remain the likely sweet-spot of price:performance?
Timothy Dry, product marketing manager, GLOBALFOUNDRIES
In five years’ time, there will be a spread of technology solutions addressing low, middle, and high ends of IoT applications. At the low end, IoT end nodes for applica- tions like connected smoke detectors, security sensors will be at 55, 40nm ULP and ULL for lowest system power, and low cost. These applications will be typically served by MCUs
In the mid-range, applications like smart-meters and fitness/medical monitoring will need systems that have more processing power
High-end products like smart-watches, learning thermo- stats, home security/monitoring cameras, and drones will require MPU-class IC products (~2000DMIPs) and run high-order operating systems (e.g. Linux, Android). These products will be made in leading-edge nodes starting at 22FDX, 14FF and migrating to 7FF and beyond. Design for lowest dynamic power for longest battery life will be the key driver, and these products typically require human machine Interface (HMI) with animated graphics on a high resolution displays. Connectivity will include BLE, WiFi and cellular with strong security.
Steve Carlson, product management group director, Cadence
We have seen recent announcements of IoT targeted devices at 14nm. The value created by Moore’s Law integration should hold, and with that, there will be inherent advan- tages to those who leverage next generation process nodes. Still, other product categories may reach functionality saturation points where there is simply no more value obtained by adding more capability. We anticipate that there will be more “live” process nodes than ever in history.
Jon Lanson, vice president worldwide sales & marketing, Presto Engineering
It is fair to say that most IoT devices will be a heterogeneous aggregation of analog functions rather than high power digital processors. Therefore, and by similarity with Bluetooth and RFID devices, 90nm and 65nm will remain the mainstream nodes for many sub-vertical markets, enabling the integration of RF and analog front-end functions with digital gate density. By default, sensors will stay out of the monolithic path for both design and cost reasons. The best answer would be that the IoT ASIC will follow eventually the same scaling as the MCU products, with embedded non-volatile memories, which today is 55-40nm centric and will move to 28nm with industry maturity and volumes.
Korczynski: If most IoT devices will include some manner of sensor which must be integrated with CMOS logic and memory, then do we need new capabilities in EDA-flows and burn-in/ test protocols to ensure meeting time-to-market goals?
Nicolas Williams, product marketing manager, Mentor Graphics
If we define a typical IoT device as a product that contains a MEMS sensor, A/D, digital processing, and a RF-connection to the internet, we can see that the funda- mental challenge of IoT design is that teams working on this product need to master the analog, digital, MEMS, and RF domains. Often, these four domains require different experience and knowledge and sometimes design in these domains is accomplished by separate teams. IoT design requires that all four domains are designed and work together, especially if they are going on the same die. Even if the components are targeting separate dice that will be bonded together, they still need to work together during the layout and verification process. Therefore, a unified design flow is required.
Stephen Pateras, product marketing director, Mentor Graphics
Being able to quickly debug and create test patterns for various embedded sensor IP can be addressed with the adoption of the new IEEE 1687 IP plug-and-play standard. If a sensor IP block’s digital interface adheres to the standard, then any vendor-provided data required to initialize or operate the embedded sensor can be easily and quickly mapped to chip pins. Data sequences for multiple sensor IP blocks can also be merged to create optimized sequences that will minimize debug and test times.
Jon Lanson, vice president worldwide sales & marketing, Presto Engineering
From a testing standpoint, widely used ATEs are generally focused on a few purposes, but don’t necessarily cover all elements in a system. We think that IoT devices are likely to require complex testing flows using multiple ATEs to assure adequate coverage. This is likely to prevail for some time as short run volumes characteristic of IoT demands are unlikely to drive ATE suppliers to invest R&D dollars in creating new purpose-built machines.
Korczynski: For the EDA of IoT devices, can all sensors be modeled as analog inputs within established flows or do we need new modeling capability at the circuit level?
Steve Carlson, product management group director, Cadence
Typically, the interface to the physical world has been partitioned at the electrical boundary. But as more mechanical and electro-mechanical sensors are more deeply integrated, there has been growing value in co-design, co-analysis, and co-optimization. We should see more multi-domain analysis over time.
Nicolas Williams, product marketing manager, Mentor Graphics
Designers of IoT devices that contain MEMS sensors need quality models in order to simulate their behavior under physical conditions such as motion and temperature. Unlike CMOS IC design, there are few standardized MEMS models for system-level simulation. State of the art MEMS modeling requires automatic generation of behav- ioral models based on the results of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) using reduced-order modeling (ROM). ROM is a numerical methodology that reduces the analysis results to create Verilog-A models for use in AMS simulations for co-simulation of the MEMS device in the context of the IoT system.
Korczynski: For test of IoT devices which may use ultra-low threshold voltage transistors, what changes are needed compared to logic test of a typical “low-power” chip?
Steve Carlson, product management group director, Cadence
Susceptibility to process corners and operating conditions becomes heightened at near-threshold voltage levels. This translates into either more conservative design sign-off criteria, or the need for higher levels of manufacturing screening/tests. Either way, it has an impact on cost, be it hidden by over-design, or overtly through more costly qualification and test processes.
Jon Lanson, vice president worldwide sales & marketing, Presto Engineering
We need to make sure that the testability has also been designed to be functional structurally in this mode. In addition, sub-threshold voltage operation must account for non-linear transistor characteristics and the strong impact of local process variation, for which the conventional testability arsenal is still very poor. Automotive screening used low voltage operation (VLV) to detect latent defects, but at very low voltage close to the transistor threshold, digital becomes analog, and therefore if the usual concept still works for defect detection, functional test and @speed tests require additional expertise to be both meaningful and efficient from a test coverage perspective.
Korczynski: Do we have sufficient specifications within “5G” to handle IoT device interoperability for all market segments?
Rajeev Rajan, Vice President of Internet of Things (IoT) at GLOBALFOUNDRIES
The estimated timeline for standardization availability of 5G is around 2020. 5G is being designed keeping three classes of applications in mind: Enhanced Mobile Broadband, Massive IoT, and Mission-Critical Control. Specifically for IoT, the focus is on efficient, low-cost communication with deep coverage. We will start to see early 5G technologies start to appear around 2018, and device connectivity, interoperability and marshaling the data they generate that can apply to multiple IoT sub-segments and markets is still very much in development.
Korczynski: Will the 1st-generation of IoT devices likely include wide varieties of solution for different market-segments such as industrial vs. retail vs. consumer, or will most device use similar form-factors and underlying technologies?
Rajeev Rajan, Vice President of Internet of Things (IoT) at GLOBALFOUNDRIES
If we use CES 2016 as a showcase, we are seeing IoT “Things” that are becoming use-case or application-centric as they apply to specific sub-segments such as Connected Home, Automotive, Medical, Security, etc. There is definitely more variety on the consumer front vs. industrial. Vendors / OEMs / System houses are differentiating at the user- interface design and form-factor levels while the “under- the-hood” IC capabilities and component technologies that provide the atomic intelligence are fairly common.
Steve Carlson, product management group director, Cadence
Right now it seems like everyone is swinging for the fence. Everyone wants the home-run product that will reach a billion devices sold. Generality generally leads to sub-optimality, so a single device usually fails to meet the needs and expectations of many. Devices that are optimized for more specific use cases and elements of purchasing criteria will win out. The question of interface is an interesting one.
Korczynski: Will there be different product life-cycles for different IoT market-segments, such as 1-3 years for consumer but 5-10 years for industrial?
Rajeev Rajan, Vice President of Internet of Things (IoT) at GLOBALFOUNDRIES
That certainly seems to be the case. According to Gartner’s market analysis for IoT, Consumer is expected to grow at a faster pace in terms of units compared to Enterprise, while Enterprise is expected to lead in revenue. Also the churn-cycle in Consumer is higher / faster compared to Enterprise. Today’s wearables or smart-phones are good reference examples. This will however vary by the type of “Thing” and sub-segment. For example, you expect to have your smart refrigerator for a longer time period compared to smart clothing or eyewear. As ASPs of the
“Things” come down over time and new classes of products such as disposables hit the market, we can expect even larger volumes.
Jon Lanson, vice president worldwide sales & marketing, Presto Engineering
The market segments continue to be driven by the same use cases. In consumer wearables, short cycles are linked to fashion trends and rapid obsolescence, where consumer home use has longer cycles closer to industrial market requirements. We believe that the lifecycle norms will hold true for IoT devices.
Korczynski: For the IoT application of infrastructure monitoring (e.g. bridges, pipelines, etc.) long-term (10-20 year) reliability will be essential, while consumer applications may be best served by 3-5 year reliability devices which cost less; how well can we quantify the trade-off between cost and chip reliability?
Steve Carlson, product management group director, Cadence
Conceptually we know very well how to make devices more reliable. We can lower current densities with bigger wires, wecanrunatcoolertemperatures,andsoon. Thedifficulty is always in finding optimality for a given criterion across the, for practical purposes, infinite tradeoffs to be made.
Korczynski: Why is the talk of IoT not just another “Dot Com” hype cycle?
Rajeev Rajan, Vice President of Internet of Things (IoT) at GLOBALFOUNDRIES
I participated in a panel at SEMICON China in Shanghai last month that discussed a similar question. If we think of IoT as a “brand new thing” (no pun intended), then we can think of it as hype. However if we look at the IoT as as set of use-cases that can take advantage of an evolution of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) going towards broader connectivity, huge amounts of data generated and exchanged, and a generational increase in internet and communication network bandwidths (i.e. 5G), then it seems a more down-to-earth technological progression.
Nicolas Williams, product marketing manager, Mentor Graphics
Unlike the Dot Com hype, which was built upon hope and dreams of future solutions that may or may not have been based in reality, IoT is real business. For example, in a 2016 IC Insights report, we see that last year $63.4 billion in revenue was generated for IoT systems and the market is growing at about 20% CAGR. This same report also shows IoT semiconductor sales of over $15 billion in 2015 with a CAGR of 21.1%.
Jon Lanson, vice president worldwide sales & marketing, Presto Engineering
It is the investment needed up front to create sensing agents and an infrastructure for the hardware foundation of the IoT that will lead to big data and ultimately value creation.
Steve Carlson, product management group director, Cadence
There will be plenty of hype cycles for products and product categories along the way. However, the foundational shift of the connection of things is a diode through which civili- zation will only pass through in one direction.