Bracing up for 2010

The words I believe concisely sum up design trends for 2010 are: connectivity, multimedia, power, IPs, mobility, and form factor.

None of these words expresses a new concept. But designers shall see each one in new perspectives when incorporating it in their designs. Connectivity as an add-on is an old idea. After a chip has been designed, ways are found using hardware and software to implement connectivity with the chip. Connectivity was optional for a chip. This will change. Connectivity is not going to be an option, but a compulsion. It will not be considered as an add-on, but a necessity. Its implementation will not come about after the chip has been designed, but at the time the chip is conceived. In other words, just as graphics and video are implemented into the chip at the time of chip conception, so will be connectivity. The transition of connectivity from a separate entity to an inherent design part is an important trend that I see growing this year.

ALWAYS-ON CONNECTIVITY
This trend is the result of an increasing number of applications relying on “always-on” connectivity, such as the forthcoming cloud-based multimedia and computing. Connecting chips to clouds is seeing applications in healthcare, energy, security, power management, and home multimedia. Many new applications will emerge as cloud technology matures and becomes more widely used in 2010.

Multimedia has generally been seen in the context of high quality audio, video, and graphics. It has been integral to product designs, but is now becoming a key to a product ID. The main drivers emerging that will make multimedia a greater design issue than before are Web 2.0 and LBS (location-based services) that includes advanced 3D maps in addition to location-based applications. More graphics and multi-standard videos, which are becoming necessary for many applications—for instance the digital TV differentiating through image quality and Internet connectivity—raise the stakes for higher multimedia contents in designs right from the concept.

Power has been a tricky issue ever since designs entered deep nanometrics. At higher nodes, power used to be an afterthought. After considering all design aspects, designers would factor in power. Typically from 90nm and below, the need to factor in power earlier in the design stage became necessary, because power consumption and dissipation became extremely important for appropriate chip functioning. But now with designs going to 45nm and below, chips have to be designed from the ground up for power management. Finding a high performance solution to a low power footprint has emerged perhaps the most challenging problem to which no solution has yet been found. Green designs further complicate the issue. Besides, the consumer is not going to trade off power consumption or mobility for features.

IPs CHANGE RULES
IPs have been changing the rules of the design game for some years. Differentiation, rather than using IPs, was the sought after design goal earlier, but with the greater need to cut down developmental costs rather than to differentiate, IPs have been finding favor with designers more than before. An issue was whether to use one’s own or third party IPs. This has been almost settled in favor of third party. The cost of a third-party IP is as much as 10 times below that of developing one’s own IP. This year almost all key SoC functions will be available as proven IPs. Mature SoC IPs—an SoC IP becomes mature when deployed with leading companies—with complete management expertise, will play a dominant role in designs, enabling solutions with lower capex just as foundries do with chips.

Bringing together connectivity, multimedia, low power, and IPs, and combining them with mobility and smaller form factors—netbooks, nettops, UMPC, PND, etc.— toward which the market is rapidly moving, will provide interesting challenges to the designer in 2010.

Meanwhile, EDN Asia wishes its readers, advertisers, and partners a happy and prosperous New Year.