What's next? Pervasive intelligence?
07/01/2003
Looking back, it's easy to recall that the huge "killer" applications for electronics that led to booms in the semiconductor industry were obvious. But in the early phases, it wasn't always that easy to predict that something would turn out to be a giant winner, like, in their time, transistor radios, calculators, color TVs, VCRs, and PCs.
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Sony, which was a leader in a number of products, including the early transistor radio, took a chance with the Walkman and it paid off handsomely. Nokia in frosty Finland became a world leader in cell phones, going up against giants like Ericsson and Motorola. Sometimes the new killer app emerged in fits and starts, like the Osborne and Radio Shack "portable" computers that predated today's cool tablet PCs, which allow you to easily draw, label, and file away scores of multicolor diagrams and plans.
In the early phases, it isn't always so easy to perceive where things are going. But there is something happening today that is worth noting, and that is the concept of pervasive intelligence.
We tend to think of electronics as circuit boards plugged into boxes. Sure the boxes have gotten a lot smaller, but there still is a box with smaller boards and thinner chips soldered to them for most familiar high-volume applications, whether DVD players, pocket phones, or digital cameras.
Yet there are millions upon millions of chips around that aren't so neatly tucked into a rack or box, and it appears that this area of what we might call "pervasive intelligence" is where huge growth may come in the near future. Many are embedded in appliances or automobile engines or airplanes. What's changing about these embedded applications is that more and more of the intelligence needed to respond to whatever they are monitoring or measuring is being built into the chips themselves rather than simply putting signals on a bus, collecting them, sifting through the data, and then making decisions and sending back control signals. Further, more and more of these chips have rf circuits built into them, so signals can be collected remotely rather than sent over networks that tend to get clogged and slow when too much data go through them.
So some of the key traits that characterize this emerging amorphous sort of environment are more intelligence at the source, short-range signals through the air rather than over wires, and chips that are embedded in things rather than put onto boards and stuck into boxes. A good example is the work of Alien Technologies, Morgan Hill, CA, on pepper-sized chips that will do the job of a bar code, but much more. The chips could carry product history as well as identity, and be easily scanned by a nearby receiver that sends out a signal providing just enough microwatts of power to send the data back without a battery. Millions of Gillette razors, soft drink bottle caps, and product tags could carry these minitransmitters in the next few years. These "nanoblock" chips are actually etched from a silicon surface rather than sawed, allowing 500,000 or more to come from a single 8-in. wafer.
At Intel, part of the Centrino program is a move toward embedding pervasive sensing into every process in its own 300mm wafer fabs, transmitting real-time data to nearby receivers so that all operations can be continuously monitored for anomalies or recipe violations. Materials engineers are embedding chips into concrete and other structural elements to monitor stresses and potential failures. Infineon engineers are working on tying chips into self-healing networks in carpeting, with conductors threaded through them, for applications such as security and allowing embedded LEDs to provide paths in case of emergencies (see Technology News, p. 26).
More and more chips are going into each automobile, adding to engine efficiency, braking safety, and offering a wide array of handy features. Automatic monitoring of tire pressures for display on the dash could add many millions of chips to those already bought by carmakers.
These are scattered and disparate applications, but so many potentially offer great benefits at minimal cost, that demand for chips could soar. The buildup of demand could creep in like fog, eating up fab capacity in huge gulps and confusing analysts.
What a great tonic that would be for an industry on life support!
Robert Haavind
Editor in Chief