Multicore, virtualization, and lots
of little microcontroller chips
are in the tea leaves this year.
New technologies like Serial
ATA (SATA) and PCI Express will
materialize onto more chips
and slowly move down the food chain.
Continually dwindling transistor sizes
will transform new processors and microcontrollers, adding intelligence to peripherals and hardware acceleration. They also
will boost functionality and drop costs.
In addition, more circuitry has produced a greater level of connectivity
that's changing how designers approach
a problem. Low-end sensors and controls
can be linked with Ethernet and wireless
protocols like ZigBee.
8-Bit Surprises
The high end gets
the glamour even as the low end continues to thrive. The William Baldwin Group,
a research firm, noted the growth of 8-bit
microcontrollers in a recent survey (). The 8-bit platforms will steadily climb
in both functionality and performance.
A significant chunk of this growth likely
is due to the shrinking of size, power
requirements, and price. For example,
Microchip's 8-bit PIC10F microcontroller
comes in a 2- by 3-mm dual flat no-lead
package ().
The only technology that seems to be
disappearing would be 4-bit microcontrollers. Look for a little more consistency
in the 32-bit microcontroller space, with
ARM pushing its Cortex architectures and
Freescale with its popular ColdFire architecture. The driving factor will be highquality tools, many based on Eclipse.
Furthermore, look for even better power-consumption numbers at the low end
of the 32-bit spectrum. They probably will
never match the low end of the 8- and 16bit platforms, but 32-bit MCUs will give
developers higher performance and a
better programming platform.
High-Speed Serial
The 32- and 64bit microcontrollers are starting to sport
SATA, PCI Express, and Serial RapidIO
interfaces. The host chip sets for the 32and 64-bit processors, such as AMD's
Athlon and Opteron and Intel's Core Duo
and Xeon lines, already bring these
interfaces to the high-performance computing realm.
Throughput is only one reason for
switching to the newer, high-performance
serial interfaces. Pin-count and packagesize reduction are other major factors for
the move. For once, packages may be
getting smaller as performance and functionality go up.
SATA will push IDE in the embedded
space as hard-disk drives continue to flood
the market. The smaller cable connections are a definite plus for embedded
applications, and access to External SATA
and ExpressCard technologies will be new
aspects to look for this year. The desktop
and laptop markets will lead the way, but
embedded is sure to follow, thanks to the
simplified physical and electrical interfaces compared to IDE and PCMCIA.
PCI Express won't push PCI out of the
embedded space this year. In fact, the
number of microcontrollers supporting
PCI will increase, due to the availability of
PCI peripherals and the vast reservoir of
PCI design talent.
Always the unsung hero, it's remarkable how much USB has changed all of
computing. It brings low-cost development tools to market. It has consolidated
the low- to medium-speed peripheral
interface arena. And it has become the
de facto standard for mobile devices,
even though the plethora of connector
standards is enough to baffle the best
embedded designer.