Believe it or not, it’s getting very close to the CES 2014 show in Las Vegas. If you are planning on attending the show, please join QuickLogic for exclusive demonstrations, as well as an in-depth discussion on how we can address your mobile design challenges. We’ll be showing a variety of technologies, including Android KitKat-compliant sensor hubs that enable always-on context awareness, as well as display and I/O bridging devices.
Space & time are limited. Make your reservation today at shop.quicklogic.com/ces2014/
Hope to see you there!
Hi Paul –
Other than the S1, are you aware of any sensor hub solution currently available (MCU’s FPGA, etc) that allows true “always-on” context awareness in mobile devices?
The current iPhone is advertised as such, but being an NXP MCU and considering the distinct power disadvantages of MCU’s, in your opinion does the iPhone offer TRUE “always-on” capability that would enable the bulk of emerging context aware applications?
Thx,
Bob
Hello Bob,
Any MCU or FPGA can be ‘always-on’, as in, they can operate 100% of the time. The trick is whether the power consumption of the device is low enough for the OEM and the user to find the battery consumption palatable. Our research, both past and present, tells us that OEMs are unwilling to allow power consumption greater than 2% of system battery life for the sensor subsystem to remain always on. To date, we haven’t seen an MCU that allows that. We also haven’t seen a competitive FPGA that is truly purposed a sensor hub, making us unable to say whether it can meet the OEM requirements of both power AND performance.
Finally, regarding the iPhone…if Apple is willing to allocate the battery consumption (which would seem to be higher than 2%) for the sensor subsystem, then you can justify calling it true always-on capability. Apple has always done things their way (as their advertisements like to point out), and that way is not necessarily followed by the rest of the market, especially of late.
Thanks for the question!
-Paul
Do you expect all major non-Apple smartphone vendors to quickly adopt a true always-on capability in their high-end devices and to do so within the 2% power constraint?
If so, any reason why the S1 would not get 100% of that non Apple high-end market at this point?
Also, as algorithms become more and more complex, would you expect Apple to begin to feel increasing pressure in the power arena with an MCU solution? Or are there potential technical limitations of the S1 relative to MCU’s regarding the applications that need to be supported that would encourage them (or anyone else) to stay with an MCU based solution, regardless of the disadvantages on power draw?
Thx.
Hello Bob,
sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this.
I’ll address your questions one by one:
>> Do you expect all major non-Apple smartphone vendors to quickly adopt a true always-on capability in their high-end devices and to do so within the 2% power constraint?
Quickly is a relative word — the mobile market has technology leaders and laggards. As with a lot of technologies, I would expect sensors to permeate the high-end/flagship models of the leaders first, followed by a progression to the leader mainstream/laggard flagship models, concluded by sensor penetration in most smartphones.
>>If so, any reason why the S1 would not get 100% of that non Apple high-end market at this point?
No one supplier has 100% of any market. I think that number is a bit beyond reasonable expectation.
>>Also, as algorithms become more and more complex, would you expect Apple to begin to feel increasing pressure in the power arena with an MCU solution?
I think every smartphone OEM, whether it be Apple or any other, feels power pressure everywhere and is looking at every solution possible.
>>Or are there potential technical limitations of the S1 relative to MCU’s regarding the applications that need to be supported that would encourage them (or anyone else) to stay with an MCU based solution, regardless of the disadvantages on power draw?
MCU’s are familiar to many designers, and you cannot discount the draw of using something that is a known product. Additionally, some high-end MCU’s enable to storage of significant amounts of sensor hub algorithms; moreso than the S1. While we believe that the S1’s mix of storage capacity and power consumption is very attractive, there are always going to be differences in use cases from OEM to OEM that will make some products more appropriate than others.
Thanks for the question!
Paul
Hi Paul,
Happy New Year to the team at Quicklogic! Thank you for your teams blog posts.They are very helpful to those of us that arenot engineers.
I have read recently that the folks are Notion Ink finally released the Adam II. We know from theirblog posts in 2012 that they were interested in VEE/DPO.
Can you comment on their recent release?
All the best,
Lono
Hello Lono,
Thanks for reading, and for the question. We try to make the blogs read as clearly and plainly as possible, rather than throw a bunch of corporate-speak together with hyper-technical buzzwords to create an unreadable site.
Regarding your question, I unfortunately can’t comment any further on this. It’s obviously been some time since mention of this (about a year and half at this point).
Happy new year!
-Paul