Embedded computing -- 15mn devices not so far away!

It has been close to three weeks since the Intel IDF @ Taipei, Taiwan. However, way too many things happened there, which still deserve a mention. One such event would be the keynote on embedded Internet by Doug Davis, Intel's Vice President, Digital Enterprise Group and General Manager, Embedded and Communications Group.

Today, there are 5 billion connected devices, and this number should likely go up to 15 billion by 2015, as per IDC. However, technology barriers need to be overcome. Davis cited these challenges as reliability and long life, software scalability, low power and low cost, privacy and data security, IPv4 addressing and open standards. As of now, the Intel architecture (IA) is said to be (due to lack of any good competition) the preferred architecture for the embedded Internet.

While on embedded products, post the Intel Atom processor, Davis said that the Menlow XL is likely for a Q1-09 introduction. The associated market segments include retail, PoS, digital signage, kiosks, vending, ATM, etc.

On digital PoS for retail markets, Davis highlighted India, and rightly so, adding that digital retail PoS would find applications, given the growing and quite affluent Indian middle class. Such a digital PoS device could improve inventory management and transaction security, allow more efficient space utilization, etc. Yet another application is digital signage for business intelligence [as informative displays].

Davis showed all of us MediaCart's example. MediaCart is providing a unique shopping experience. It is trying to revolutionize the shopping experience with a computerized shopping cart that assists shoppers, delivers targeted communications at the point of purchase, and streamlines store operations. Incidentally, Singapore's Venture GES was contracted by MediaCart to develop the new shopping experience cart.

Pervasive embedded computing
Davis believes that embedded computing would become more pervasive in the days ahead. "The Intel architecture has all of the unparalleled scalability to meet these needs," he added.

Davis estimated that China could go on to become the world's largest semiconductor market over the next five years or so. Semiconductor TAM for industrial automation is likely to grow from $13.5 billion in 2008 to $17.5 billion in 2012. India is said to be the second largest destination for industrial automation, which is interesting, and something to look forward to.

Digital factory
We have all had some visions, sometimes of how a digital factory would look like? And, who would be working at such a factory. Possibly, robots, or industrial robots would make up the attendance!

Well, if KUKA, a company that builds the world's leading robotic and automation devices is to be believed, we are a little closer than before to this vision or dream. Bruno Geiger, managing director, Asia Pacific, KUKA, pointed out in his chat with Davis that the company makes robotic and automation devices based on Intel's platorms. That, 'takes us closer to the vision of a digital factory!' This is a great example of multi-core in industrial automation.

Portal for embedded designers
Getting back to the embedded Internet, Davis said that the greatest challenge for customers is to integrate new technologies. To address this need, Intel is investing in a new Web portal for embedded designers. He announced that the Intel Architecture Embedded Design Center, a Web portal for embedded designers, will likely get launched in the spring of 2009. This is indeed something to look forward to!

Asia has all the trappings to become the largest market for embedded computing, and Taiwan, the largest market for automation. Well, don't count India out! Embedded systems and software is India's strength, and don't be surprised to see and hear about lots of such activities from the country.

Semicon job cuts galore, but at what cost?

The world is plagued with so many job cuts all over again, thanks to the global financial crisis! Those laid off must be getting fed up! Those who are so far lucky to survive, will be spending anxious days. Everytime we have a recession, the first thing companies do is cut jobs on the pretext of cost cutting! The semiconductor industry is also going through such an exercise at the moment!

There have been reports in the media that EDA major, Cadence, will be cutting 625 jobs! Cadence plans to achieve an annual operating expense savings of at least $150 million through a combination of workforce and other expense reductions!

AMD also announced that it will cut 500 jobs worldwide! If that's not enough, ST-NXP Wireless, to rationalize its product portfolio and development efforts, announced a plan to reduce its global workforce by about 500, including subcontractors, from the current total of over 7500 people.

Oh my!! I wonder who all are getting laid off! I hope only very few good chip designers as possible are laid off. Otherwise, how are these companies going to maintain their momentum in the global semiconductor industry if they lay off several designers?

One question! Why do companies need to hire so many people, only to dump them at the first sign of recession? And, at what cost? Is it going to make the companies nimbler, really improve profitability, improve their market standing, etc.? I wonder!

And what of the global semiconductor industry itself? What about the so-called consolidations? Besides cost cutting, what are the industry pundits really doing to try and revive semiconductors?

We do hear a lot about poor memory market, lower capex on fabs, but well, didn't they all see it coming?

iSuppli reported recently that mainly due to oversupply, a number of semiconductor companies have been struggling with their average selling prices (ASPs) so low that they were not profitable even before the current economic turmoil!

Further, companies may even face problems in getting credit or worse, finding investors for a next upgrade or expansion. And how do companies basically deal with problems? By cutting costs, such as laying off personnel or merging with other company which creates redundancy, leading to the same result.

Every single person laid off is a consumer, besides being the company's valuable asset, right? If he or she wasn't valuable enough, then why was the hiring done in the first place? Also, if he or she gets laid off, won't that effect the economy? If yes, won't that translate into the global economy taking a longer time to recover? Job cuts are fine, but at what cost? Is the industry thinking about all of these?

We all talk about how companies should try and must try to bring the cheer back in Christmas spending! As a friend remarked yesterday in jest -- "Which Christmas? This year, or next?"

Will job cuts bring the cheer back, especially in the Christmas spends? If no, then how is it helping the semicon and electronics (and all other) industries? Can you tell me?

Solar/PV is just right for India

There have been significant investments in the solar/photovoltaic space in India in the recent past, and that does not look like ending any time soon.

Given the ongoing global financial crisis, and the state of the global semiconductor industry, it appears that India has bet quite successfully on the solar/PV segment. In fact, it seems that solar/PV is just right for India! In fact, it may just kick off the kind manufacturing activity India really needs.

Poornima Shenoy, president, India Semiconductor Association (ISA), says that solar/PV is right for India for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, India has among the highest solar irradiance, globally. Secondly, it is established as a low-cost producer and assembler of solar PV cells and modules. And thirdly, India has among the best quality reserves of silica in the states of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.

She adds: "At present, solar PV may not seem to be an attractive option, primarily due to high generation costs. However, in the coming years, with increases in fossil fuel prices, rising environmental concerns, and a reduction in the cost of solar PV technology, it is likely to become a major source of energy."

The ISA expects 2015 to be an important year for the solar/PV industry. Around this time, the product cost of the Indian solar PV industry is likely to match the semi grid parity (peak power) globally, and also to match the grid parity within India.

The four major segments offering maximum potential in the coming years for solar PV in India are: rural electrification -- decentralized distributed generation (DDG); grid interactive solar PV power plants; backup power for telecom (base transceiver stations); and roof-based solar PV systems.

ISA-NMCC report on solar/PV
The ISA recently released a report on the solar PV market in New Delhi with NMCC (National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council).

According to the ISA-NMCC study, of the US$71 billion invested in new, renewable energy capacity globally in 2007, 30 percent of was in solar PV. Solar PV is the fastest growing area in the energy sector, with a CAGR of 47 percent over the last five years. The grid-connected solar PV segment saw 50 percent growth in 2007.

As per the report, the solar PV industry is likely to grow four-fold by 2011. However, there are various uncertainties in the short- to medium-term on both the supply and the demand side.

On the supply side, the main constraint is the lack of available polysilicon. The demand side is limited by the quantum of incentives for solar PV.

Gradually, there will likely be improvements in technology. The decreasing cost of manufacturing could drive the preferential tariffs lower, and ongoing demand for PV products could also attract significant investment.

As for the global solar PV supply chain. Thin-film production is one of the fastest growing segments in solar. The lack of available polysilicon is limiting growth, and this has led to the emergence of thin-film technology. This technology has enjoyed substantial growth since 2005: 80 percent in 2006 and over 100 percent in 2007.

FPGAs have adopted Moore's Law more closely!

How true! Field programmable gate arrays or FPGAs have become faster, denser and more complex over the years!

Speaking at the recently held Altera SOPC conference, S. Janakiraman, President and CEO-R&D Services, MindTree, and former chairman, India Semiconductor Association (ISA), said these had found acceptance in a wide range of market segments. "FPGAs are everywhere, be it telecom or industrial or medical," he added.

Once relegated to simple glue logic design, FPGAs are challenging SoCs today. The million-gate FPGAs are, in fact, quite common. What's more, ASSP like features, for example, PCI Express, USB, etc., have also found their way into FPGAs.

FPGAs have adopted Moore's Law more closely than any other device technology! They even 'help' in 'ratifying' new process nodes.

Janakiraman said: "With the ever increasing costs of designs and declining ASIC starts, FPGAs offer a considerably less riskier approach, development costs, tools and testing – even at latest technology nodes."

So what would be the factors driving change? These are multiple, and actually split into cost, performance, time-to-market and also field-upgradeable hardware.

From the cost aspect, functions in a system with standard ICs are performed by dedicated discrete components on a PCB. The FPGA route can reduce routing congestion and lower costs by enabling the use of smaller boards with less layers and lower component count.

Next comes performance, and a key factor in accelerating performance is parallel implementation. Here too the FPGA can be easily programmed to handle the same sequential instruction set by leveraging multiple micro-CPUs, connected by very wide internal buses.

Time-to-market has obviously become critical with the consumerization of electronics. As a result, the FPGAs are increasingly entering this segment because of the obvious advantages of early product introductions.

As for the field upgradeable hardware, Janakiraman elucidated an example: configuring video capture card for Europe (PAL), NA (NTSC), JAPAN (SECAM), need one hardware configuration with an FPGA on it. Depending on the location end-user downloads country specific driver that configures FPGA accordingly.

Jani Sir, as he is affectionately known, delivered the keynote at the Altera SOPC, which really touched upon how a fabless India was shining.

I also managed to catch up with Jordan Plofsky Senior Vice President Market, Altera. All I can add here as a sneak peek is: uncertainty favors FPGA's usage! Let's see how true -- in my next blog!

My blog's been nominated by Electronics Weekly!

It was indeed a pleasant surprise to receive an email from Electronics Weekly, yesterday evening, informing me that my blog was recently shortlisted/nominated in the 2008 ElectronicsWeekly.com Blog Awards by a reader of ElectronicsWeekly.com!

All of the nominated blogs have apparently been considered by the panel of judges at ElectronicsWeekly.com. The email said, "I am delighted to inform you that you have made the shortlist in the Best Electronics Hardware Blog category."

The list can be seen on Electronics Weekly's (www.electronicsweekly.com) website!

Wow! I must add that here that there are such great blogs and bloggers in that list that I went dizzy for a few minutes!

I never expected my blog to reach this kind of appeal or level! Nor do I think I have that kind of traffic, as this blog has more to do with serious stuff, rather than talk about gadgets, etc. In fact, somebody once told me last year that no one would bother about a blog on semicon and electronics, nor would I get any traffic!

Well, all of this has never bothered me. I'm here to blog about what I feel is close to my heart! If folks happen to stop by, I am extremely grateful to all of them!

Irrespective of whether I win this award, it is just the right time to thank all of you, dear readers of my blog! Thanks to all of you for choosing to stop by my blog occasionally! I sincerely hope you find the content interesting and appealing enough.

There's lots happening in the semiconductor, electronics and telecom industries, and hope that I am able to add my views on all of those in the coming months.

Thanks again, my dear readers. Please keep those suggestions coming. I will try to live up to your expectations. Have a great Halloween, everyone!

Chip forecast at 4-6pc range; financial gloom nicks industry recovery!

Early this year, during the IEF 2008 at Dubai, Future Horizons' CEO, Malcolm Penn, had forecast a 12 percent growth for the global semiconductor industry, and that we were all dealing with an industry in 'deep trauma'!

Soon after, the chip market started showing some signs of recovery and actually started to buzz again. This was in early June. Later, in July, the semiconductor industry numbers started indicating that this may not be a bad year after all! It also came to light that lousy memory numbers were holding back overall market numbers.

With the memory market not showing much signs of recovery, several analysts revised their forecasts in August and September, including Future Horizons. In early September, Penn forecast that the global semiconductor industry would probably grow at 4-8 percent.

However, now, with a global slowdown now in place, Penn says that Future Horizons' January (and July) forecast assumptions, and chip market forecasts, are no longer valid. He adds, "We have not yet had chance to fully crunch the numbers, but at first sight, 2008 now looks set to come in at between 4 and 5 percent, with 2009 in the 4-6 percent range."

This is very unfortunate! Just when it seemed a little while ago that the global semiconductor industry was in some stage of a small recovery, the global financial turmoil has more or less, ended that hope!

Penn cautions: "2009, however, could slip negative, depending on what happens to IC unit growth. At the moment we think this highly unlikely, given the 6.1 percent advanced and developing market GDP growth forecast and the fact there have only been two years of negative IC unit growth in the last 23 years, namely 1985 and 2001, both triggered by a massive inventory build."

Obviously, a slowing world economy is bad news for the chip industry! However, the coupling, he notes, is not as strong as one might be lulled into intuitively believing. There have been seven instances in the last 22 years where the chip market has grown in value during a period of slowing economic growth and two occasions when the market has declined in a period of GDP growth.

"IC units have exhibited three periods when they grew in the face of a GDP decline and five occasions when the units declined despite growth in the world GDP. The economy is, thus, not quite king; inventory, excess capacity and ASPs also play a role," adds Penn in his monthly report.

Underlying good news for chip industry
The underlying good news for the chip industry is that all of the other industry trends are good. Inventories do not seem to be seriously bloated; wafer fab capacity utilization levels are high; capital expenditure is low, and has been now for several quarters; and ASPs are in the midst of a long-term structural recovery phase.

Thus, while 2009 IC unit demand must inevitably slow, this slowing will coincide with an inevitable parallel slowing in new capacity additions, itself the result of a significant 2008 and prior Cap Ex cutbacks. The combined effect ought to be a relatively benign decrease in capacity utilisation rates, helping to cushion the inevitable near-term ASP pressures.

Looking at the near-term ASP trends, ASPs overall have been falling during 2008, but they have been falling much slower than the 2007 rate. This means that ASPs are actually increasing when measured on annualised basis.

Slowdown bound to impact ASPs
According to Penn, the economic (demand) slowdown is bound to negatively impact ASPs. What is more important from a market growth perspective however is not that they are falling but how fast they are compared with the same period last year.

While the ASP recovery trend might wobble next year, the underlying trends still look good, providing the world does not slip into global recession.

The immediate world government policy challenge is to stabilize the global financial markets, while nursing economies through a global downturn and keeping inflation under control. "That is quite a steep challenge (it has never before been called upon to be done); the great danger being, aside from the risk of failing, is a return to vested self-interests and protectionism and the impact that this will have on globalisation and future world growth. There is a real danger this is the precursor of World War 3, with economics as the fire-power," he adds.

Penn advises: "Over a longer horizon, policymakers will be looking to rebuild firm underpinnings for financial intermediation and will be considering how to reduce cyclical tendencies in the global economy and strengthen supply/demand responses in commodity markets.

"The electronics industry would also do well to divorce itself from the financial market's casino driven addiction by starting to plan for its longer-term growth needs not the previous (and now seriously discredited) Wall Street greed/bonus-driven quarterly hysteria."

This has indeed been a topsy-turvy year! Apple's iPhone 3G and now, Google's G1 phone have hit the markets. Intel demonstated its Moorestown platform at the IDF in Taipei, promising great things in 2009! Intel also spoke a lot about mobile Intenet devices (MIDs) and what great things these can do.

However, no one, it seems, is able to point out confidently that the cheer in Christmas spend will be back! Or, how, 2009, will pan out! When will the global semiconductor industry see light at the end of the tunnel?

IDF Taiwan: Desktops with Intel Core i7; IBM, Intel ally on Blade servers

There's more news from IDF, Taiwan, folks! One, Intel is all set to launch high-end desktops powered by the Intel Core i7 processor, next month. This was disclosed by Kirk B. Skaugen, Vice President, Digital Enterprise Group, General Manager, Server Platforms Group, in the Digital Enterprise Keynote: IA = Embedded + Dynamic, during the recently held Intel Developer Forum (IDF).

Intel vPro technology-based business clients: "Piketown" for desktops and "Calpella" for notebooks, will be powered by future Nehalem processors and will provide corporate customers with even more enterprise-focused innovations.

Also, Intel and IBM strengthened their Blade server segment partnership. More of that a bit later!

According to Skaugen, we are in the third stage of the Internet revolution. "The fourth stage is the pervasive Internet. By 2015, there will be 15 billion devices connected to the Internet. The Atom processor has unleashed a new wave of connected devices. However, these devices will need massive infrastructure support as well. Storage will also become a massive area of growth and development," he added.

IBM Switch specs opened to SSI
According to Skaugen, the best infrastructure is built on infrastructure standards. Citing IDC figures, he said that the Blade market growth will be 37 percent CAGR during 2007-11. The Apac market will grow 78 percent.

IBM and Intel also strengthened their alliance in Blade servers. Mark Wiltse, IBM Systems & Technology Group, said that Blade.org has been created and is focused on solutions collaboration. "We are opening up the IBM Switch specifications to Server Systems Infrastructure (SSI). This will create broader opportunities in Blade. There is broad support for SSI Blade specifications." IBM will extend the BladeCenter switch specification for blade servers to the SSI on a royalty-free basis.

Commenting on the Nehalem, Skaugen added that it is a next generation microarchitecture, using second generation of virtualization, and there is 3X memory bandwidth support as well. Intel's Power Boost technology has also been used on the Nehalem.

Skaugen also provided details of next-generation high-end desktops powered by the Intel Core i7 processor, launching next month. These high-end desktops will provide outstanding performance for gaming and content creation applications.

Calpella and Piketown in the offing
He shared that the 2009 Intel vPro technology-based business clients codenamed "Piketown" for desktops and "Calpella" for notebooks will be powered by future Nehalem processors and will provide corporate customers with even more enterprise-focused innovations.

The upcoming Nehalem microarchitecture spans a range of products. First segments will include the Intel Core i7 processor and a variant designed for the efficient performance server segments codenamed "Nehalem-EP."

A derivative designed for the expandable server market segment ("Nehalem-EX") as well as other desktop and mobile versions ("Havendale," "Lynnfield," "Auburndale" and "Clarksfield") will be in production beginning in the second half of 2009.

Nehalem's integrated power gate
Stephen S. Pawlowski, Intel Senior Fellow, highlighted that the Nehalem has an integrated power gate. "We have got the M9 (metal 9) deposited on the silicon to create low-power resistance." Having power gates means that the idle cores use near zero power.

Several Intel partners also showcased their products at IDF Taiwan. There were 37 new motherboards, while the Nehalem EP was touted as the world's most adaptable server platform. Skaugen said: "it is energy efficient and designed for virtualization. Also, there is investment protection with FlexMigration."

32/64GB SSDs on offer
Intel also introduced its range of SSDs, in 2.5-inch form factors, with 32/64GB storage at the IDF.

Citing SSD benefits, he said these included 6X performance increase, 46X power reduction and 75 percent space reduction.