The architecture of the Internet of Things master chip

The ZTE event caused a global sensation, and everyone's attention was focused on the lack of server, computer and storage underlying chip technology.?Shares of domestic chip suppliers such as Ziguang rose in response.

This incident reflects that China is relatively weak in the chip and its industrial chain;?After all, in the PC era, we started too late.?However, in the coming era of the Internet of Things (chip), we still have the hope to achieve overtaking in corners.?As an important part of the Internet of Things, IoT chips include security chips, mobile payment chips, communication RF chips, identity recognition chips and other chip industries. It is estimated that China's IoT scale will reach 1.5 trillion by 2020.?Next, this article mainly introduces several architectures of the main control chip of the Internet of Things.

Domestic and foreign giants have laid out IoT chips

The bright market prospect of the Internet of Things and the yet to be finalized IoT master chip architecture market have attracted domestic and foreign giants to make efforts to seize the commanding heights.

In foreign countries, Intel released an x86-based chip called Edison in 2014, followed by the x86-based Curie chip in 2015; QUALCOMM is also unwilling to stay in the mobile field. In 2016, it first launched the Snapdragon 600E and 410E IoT chips based on its own Krait300 architecture. The Krait300 architecture is based on the ARM V7 instruction set, and its performance is between the A9 and A15 architectures designed by ARM; Samsung also released Artik1, 5 and 10 IoT chips in 2015, all based on ARM architecture. In addition, giants such as Google, AMD and Nvidia have also developed chips for the Internet of Things.

In the domestic market, MediaTek launched the Internet of Things chip MT2503 based on ARM v7 architecture in 2015, which has been widely used in the field of bike sharing, and reached an agreement with Microsoft this year to launch the first Azure Sphere chip MT3620; Huawei HiSilicon launched the first commercial Internet of Things chip in September 2016, and its Boudica 120 and 150 chips were also shipped on a large scale in the second half of 2017, all based on ARM architecture; In addition, manufacturers such as SMIC International, Huahong Hongli, TSMC, Spreadtrum, China Resources Micro and Lianxin Technology have also laid out the Internet of Things chip market.

IoT chip architecture

The premise of the Internet of Things is the connection between intelligent terminal devices and sensors. Its application scenarios and characteristics make the IoT chips tend to be low power consumption and high integration. Low power consumption enables developers to add functions to devices with limited power consumption, while maintaining the chip size and expanding application availability. Adding highly integrated components can realize plug and play of chips, simplify application development, facilitate equipment upgrading, and facilitate the rapid introduction of products to the market.

ARM architecture

With the development of smart phones, ARM architecture has been shining in recent years. ARM is one of the representative works of RISC microprocessors. Its biggest feature is energy saving. It is widely used in embedded system design. Even the default chip of the Internet of Things in many people's minds is ARM architecture.

At present, the chip architectures on the market are mainly x86 and ARM. Compared with the x86 architecture based on the complex instruction set, the ARM architecture uses the reduced instruction set, and its chips are more compact and lower power consumption. The characteristics and application scenarios of the Internet of Things require that the chips used must consider power consumption and integration, which makes the chips of the Internet of Things based on the ARM architecture occupy an inherent advantage in the era of the Internet of Things.

The fact is exactly the same. As mentioned above, Qualcomm 600E and 410E IoT chips, Huawei Boudica 120 and 150 IoT chips and Samsung Artik1, 5 and 10 IoT chips are all based on ARM architecture. The MT2503 IoT chip of Mediatech using ARM v7 architecture has been widely used in the field of bike sharing.

x86

Intel is probably the only Internet of Things chip on the market based on x86 architecture. Its Edison and Curie launched in 2014 and 2015 are based on x86 architecture. Perhaps it is to realize the helplessness of x86 architecture in the era of the Internet of Things. Although Intel's subsequent chips developed for the Internet of Things are still based on the x86 architecture, they internally simplify the system instructions and control the energy consumption problem. This practice also implicitly acknowledges that the x86 architecture is not feasible in the era of the Internet of Things.

So Intel announced the purchase of Altera, the world's second largest FPGA manufacturer, at a price of about $54 per share for $16.7 billion, which is the largest acquisition in Intel's 47-year history. The corresponding valuation of Intel's acquisition is up to 35 times, which is very rare in the semiconductor field.

Intel's acquisition of Altera is mainly based on three considerations:

First, IBM cooperated with Xilinx, the world's largest FPGA manufacturer, to focus on big data and cloud computing, which caused great concern to Intel. Intel has lagged behind in mobile processors, big data and cloud computing. Intel cooperates with Altera this time to open the internal interface of Intel processors and form the combination mode of CPU+FPGA. FPGA is used for shaping calculation, and cpu is used for floating point calculation and scheduling. This combination has higher unit power performance and lower latency.

Second, IC design and chip cost. With the exponential growth of semiconductor manufacturing process, FPGA will replace ASIC in the field of Internet of Things with special equipment with high value, relatively small batch size (less than 50000 chips) and multi-channel computing. At the same time, FPGA development cycle is 50% shorter than ASIC, which can be used to quickly seize the market

Third, Intel's acquisition of Altera is actually a good opportunity in the field of Internet of Things. Before, one of the main functions of FPGA is for prototype design. First use FPGA for function verification and then use ASIC chip, in order to better design ASIC under the condition of cost saving. However, with the continuous improvement of FPGA's performance, capability and complexity of realizable logic, FPGA can now directly replace some parts of ASIC and DSP in the field of high-performance and multi-channel computing. The main reasons are three: parallel computing, variable hardware structure, and changeable in operation.

ASIC

The advantages of ASIC chips are strong computing power and low cost of mass production, but the development cycle is long and the cost of single chip is high. It is mainly applicable to areas with large volume, high requirements for computing power and long development cycle, such as most consumer electronics chips and experiments.

Compared with ASIC, the power consumption of FPGA is relatively large, and the cost advantage is not enough to support the cost-effective Internet of Things. Therefore, ASIC is more selective in the latest application solution for edge cloud computing.

ASIC can be customized into different integrated circuits according to different product requirements. Although compared with FPGA, ASIC has higher performance and lower power consumption, but its flexibility is not as good as FPGA. Now at the end of July, Google released the ASIC chip Edge TPU, which aims to supplement the TPU chip of Google Cloud and further improve the Internet of Things market.

summary

The Internet of Things chip has become a hot spot in the eyes of domestic and foreign giants. Intel x86 architecture dominates PC chips for 20 years, and ARM architecture dominates mobile communication chips. In the era of the Internet of Things, can ARM architecture or x86 architecture continue to be brilliant?

ZTE's lifting of the ban shows that the global electronics industry belongs to an ecosystem. It is unrealistic to attempt to control the entire ecosystem only by controlling a certain link, such as chips. Moreover, because it is an ecosystem, it is also controlled and restricted by each other. In addition, the demand for chips varies according to the application fields, and none of them can dominate the world.

At present, we should not only analyze and layout the Internet of Things technology from the perspective of the overall ecology, but also strengthen our own strength and create innovation barriers in key technologies.

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