标签: smartphones

In the article " The Ghosts in our Machines" , Jack Ganssle tackles the issues that have always been a part of the embedded engineer’s life. These are the unanticipated glitches that occur due to software "hiccups," noise in the signals received and processed, unpredictable electrostatic discharge (ESD), and electromagnetic interference (EMI) that plague every design no matter how much work has been done to minimize their occurrence, severity, and effects on signal integrity. A wide range of techniques, tools, and strategies have been developed to deal with these issues.   Will the wealth of tools available be up to the challenges ahead? I am not sure about that. I see major EMI and ESD problems ahead not only for next generation wireless embedded devices and smartphones, but also for the many Internet of Things applications that are being talked about.   First let's look at ESD. To get more performance and functionality, smart phone manufacturers are pushing towards more functionality with multicore SoC designs that are pushing the limits of lithography. Most such designs are in the nanometer-sized transistor range, and because of competitive pressures they are asking for even more functionality, higher performance, AND lower power. But as supply voltages are pushed to 1 volt and below, the ability of the digital logic to discriminate between a zero and a one becomes more of a challenge, as does the ability to determine what is a harmful electrostatic discharge and what is not.   In current portable devices such as touch interface-based smartphones, designers have done a magnificent job of dealing with the electrostatic spikes that are only a fingertip away from one of the biggest and most constant producers of ESD – the human body. But it is not clear if the tools developed so far will be adequate in the consumer IoT segment, where developers are talking about more personal and wearable electronics on our bodies, in our clothing, and in constant direct contact with our skin.   The closer such devices are to the skin and the human body's natural electrostatic field, designers will have to factor in their effects in an environment that produces a constant rain of particulates (flakes of skin) and corrosive salt-laden moisture (sweat) - on the reliability of these devices.   As to EMI, the problems there will also increase. In his Ghosts blog, Jack writes about an incident in which embedded electronics in an electric stove turned on every time the home owner’s cell phone rang. That was only a few years ago and it was during a period when mobile phone use was not as prevalent as it is now.   Now, with the number of cell phones in use about equivalent to the population of the earth, I can only imagine the EMI problems will only increase. While my kitchen oven has not turned on when I use my cell phone, the voice quality of phone calls I receive in my electronics-laden home office is often pitiful.   Based on what a few of my neighbors have told me, I am willing to bet that many of the homes with wireless home networking and automation systems are having similar problems. And the numbers of such systems is small compared to the pervasiveness of the Internet of Things that everyone is predicting.   If used imaginatively and with due diligence, many of the techniques and tools that are currently available will lessen the severity and occurrence of such problems. But there are a lot of unknowns ahead that will require that we not only use our current knowledge in new ways, but look for better tools as well.   What do you think? What has been your experience? What tools and methods do you trust enough to deal with the challenges ahead? Which have run out of steam and need to be set aside? What new techniques and tools are you using?

  Virtualization is a term that has taken some time to internalize for me. My introduction with virtualization was as far back as 1992 when Windows 3.1 introduced the 386 enhanced mode, and the ability to run multiple DOS sessions with each session being independent of each other but having a separate 640KB space available to each virtual DOS session (can you believe we had operating systems that ran in 128KB?) . My “play” machine is an Intel I7 based notebook with 8GB RAM, 1TB Hard disk, runs Windows 8 Pro and using the Hyper-V virtualizer runs for me a virtualized Windows 7, and Ubuntu 12.04 (64 bit) concurrently. My Ubuntu virtual environment quite often runs a virtual android device too (recursive virtualization?). Everything running at once, and I’ll be damned…it’s faster than my “work” notebook (Intel I5, 4GB) running my work operating system…OUTLOOK! At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2013) earlier this month, the best demo that I saw was at the Ubuntu booth. They had a Samsung Galaxy S III phone, that when you plug it into a docking station (Display, keyboard, mouse) would run a complete Ubuntu desktop version concurrently with the Android that is already running on the phone. There has been a lot of talk about Ubuntu’s other announcement of building a phone operating system but this one got my interest. Think of the possibilities, you can carry your entire computing environment around with you, and plug it into another device to give it context. So based on what you plug it into the device can morph to what you want !! This was running a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9, and piggybacks off some modifications to the Android kernel. Newer devices launching this year are going to be running quad-core ARM Cortex A15, which has the ability to run each core separately, and you can actually run a separate operating system on each of the cores. I don’t really expect to see a virtualized IOS/Android/Windows phone anytime soon, but think about the performance that you can put in the background.  I got to discussing the demo and it’s possibilities with Pat McGowan, Director of Engineering and Product Strategy at Canonical (company the ships ubuntu). A lot of this is already available and can be used in your designs, the potential is huge… The smartphone has become the window into the world around us. With features like these the smartphone will be able to acquire context, of where we are and what we want to do, and provide today what we only saw in the movies. An ancient Chinese curse says “May you live in Interesting times…” We most definitely are ....   - Samyeer Metrani

I check out what's going on in "media", especially TV, when I am looking to "veg out" for a few minutes. This makes me feel somewhat up-to-date without actually spending time watching the shows, so I don't feel so out-of-it when someone mentions a popular show. Now that it's July and August, there are many coverage of upcoming, new shows here in the US. The various TV networks are announcing the Fall plans, with a big push for these shows. Depending how you count them, there will be 20 to 40 of these offerings (most won't make it, but that's another story). Looking over their plans, I see that most of these shows, especially the dramas, center on doctors, police, or lawyers (and adults who seem to have no job but are otherwise living well). Let me see. . . I don't see engineers at the center of any of these shows, and that old déjà vu feeling is rolling over me again. If there is an engineer in any of these, it's most likely as a peripheral character—such as someone the police go to once in a while for some expert insight—or as a mad bomber or crazy loner. I used to be upset about this. After all, engineers (and scientist) play a very important role in making stuff that the doctors, police, and lawyers use and expect as part of their regular array of tools and resources. Those smartphones, networks, forensic instruments, and databases don't grow on trees, right? But on that proverbial other hand, maybe it is just as well we're barely visible. While TV shows can serve to put the protagonists in a positive light, by showing the nature of the work they do and the challenges, all too often the writers fall back on tired clichés and meaningless stereotypes, since it's so much easier to do that. I suspect that any show that was engineering-centric would make engineers look like a bizarre subspecies of some sort. My other concern is that in their zeal to make everything more dramatic, these writers would muck it up, anyway. Let's face it, there often isn't a lot of visible drama in good, solid engineering, just hard work, attention to detail, some group meetings and discussion, the occasional "aha" moment as you find and fix a bug, all spiced by the pressure of deadlines, cost, and performance. Much of what makes engineering the special activity it is in the inner satisfaction, as captured by the title of Samuel Florman's book, "The Existential Pleasures of Engineering." TV-story compatible it is not, in most cases. What do you think? Should we be upset that engineers are pretty much not the center of a modest number of TV shows? Or should we be happy? Or should we simply not care, and worry about other things?  

Watching the growing interest in Android among developers at the Spring 2011 Embedded Systems Conference, I feel as if I have gone through this experience before. Watching the growing interest in Android among developers at the Spring 2011 Embedded Systems Conference this week, I feel as if I have gone through this experience before. As baseball legend Yogi Berra put it: " It's déjà vu all over again. " But not quite.   My impressions have to do with the way mobile phones and smartphones have evolved and the involvement of embedded systems design technology at various stages through their short history.   In many ways, what is happening has direct parallels to what occurred in the early days of the personal computer market. But there are also tantalizing differences, the significance of which I have yet to determine.   First let's look at the past, in which the PC market went through three stages. In Stage 1, in the late 1970s diverse personal computing systems were built using diverse OSes, processors, buses, software, tools and hardware borrowed from existing embedded systems, which were based on the industry's first microprocessorsIntel's 8080/8086/8048 families, Motorola's 6800/68000 devices, and about half a dozen or so smaller competitors.   Before a standard PC platform existed, the majority of these processors were embedded in industrial, automotive, and consumer white goods to replace bulky mechanical and electromechanical intelligence.   There was a variety of personalized computer systems, but no common architecture. They were built from pre-existing bits and pieces borrowed from hardware and software for the embedded markets. My first home computer used an 8 bit Z80 CPU and 64k bits of DRAM. Everything was connected via an 8bit wide S-100 bus , which borrowed heavily from the backplane buses used in industrial apps. I think the display was a converted TV monitor.   Similarly, the software was just as eclectic and borrowed. The operating system I used was called CP/M (Control Program/Monitor) and was designed originally to work with the Intel 8080 Development Systems. The word processor was a primitive in-memory text editor like the ones programmers used for coding. Then in the early 80s the IBM PC became the de facto standard, marking the beginning of Stage 2, where the experience software and hardware engineers gained in embedded designs was applied to the exploding PC market. On the heels of Stage 2 came Stage 3, where embedded developers looked at this standard platform and started using it in their traditional embedded designs, albeit with some modification to meet the specific requirements of the various industrial, automotive, mil/aero, and consumer apps. In the evolution of the mobile and smartphone market, Stage 1 was the point not too long ago where dozens of companies used diverse embedded processors, real time operating systems, and embedded software tools to build their mobile phones. Embedded developers, familiar with the borrowed building blocks, were in great demand. Now we are in Stage 2. There are fewer processors maybe three or four and about as many software platforms developed specifically for mobile/smartphone devices. They are all competing to become the de facto standard, with Google's Linux-derived Android platform grabbing the attention of most embedded developers. Embedded developers are still in demand, not so much because of their past experience with the building blocks, but mostly due to their expertise in resource-constrained environments, a characteristic mobiles and smartphone share with more traditional embedded designs. At ESC this week, I see developers moving to Stage 3: using the new mobile/smartphone specific building blocks not only to develop apps for smartphones, but also adapt them for traditional real time and deterministic embedded systems. This time around, however, while there are many similarities, there are also big differences, all of which will add a unique twist to the evolution of such platforms, particularly in embedded applications. One thing that is definitely the same is the Apple factor. In the desktop computer market, the competitor to the IBM PC was and still isApple and its Macintosh. In mobile smartphones and consumer embedded devices, Apple is also there with its iPod, iPhone and iPads and its own processor and operating system. Similar to the Mac, Apple's "iPlatform" is a closed proprietary system. And unless Apple changes its ways, developers are not likely to bother to adapt it to traditional embedded applications. But unlike the PC market, where Microsoft's Windows platforms and Intel's various x86 CPUs operated in lock-step, things are much different now. In addition to Android, Microsoft also has its various Windows Embedded and Windows Mobile platforms. Indeed, at ESC there is an Windows Embedded OS class track. On the hardware side, Intel is in both mobiles and embedded apps with its new x86-based Atom CPUs, competing with the ARM and MIPS CPUs. Numerous RTOSes run on the architecture and, through its acquisition of Wind River Systems as a wholly owned subsidiary, Intel is a major provider to the embedded market of not only its own proprietary RTOS, but several versions of Linux. As things continue to evolve, it will be interesting to see how much the current mobile/embedded market will match the evolution of the PC/embedded market, and how much it will differ.  

  Digital still cameras Despite the fact that nearly all smartphones and even mid-tier feature phones include a camera, digital still cameras remain popular. Their advantage to date has been that most smartphone cameras were really not that great. But that has changed a great deal in the past 18 months. There are now a number of smartphones with integrated 8-megapixel cameras, and rumor is that HTC Corp. is tinkering with a smartphone that features a 16-megapixel camera.   Still, while cameras in smartphones and tablets prove handy for snapping impromptu photos and provide the capability for posting them directly to the web, they lack powerful lenses and don't have near the number of features as your typical point-and-shoot. Digital still cameras continue to evolve and drop in price, putting them in safe territory by Gartenburg's definition. And, unlike an MP3 player, typical households have had at least one camera for decades. It's standard equipment nearly all over the world.   According to IHS, sales of digital still cameras have grown steadily—apart from a recession-related hiccup in 2009—from 57.8 million units in 2003 to 125.7 million units in 2010. The firm projects that sales of digital still cameras will grow to 134.6 million units this year and about 140 million units in 2012.   So, the digital still camera market is still growing nicely and projected to continue to do so, even as smartphones with more advanced integrated cameras hit the market. But growth in this market would likely be a lot more impressive without the menace of convergence. We all know many people who consider the camera in their iPhone good enough to meet their needs.   While such anecdotal evidence suggests that smartphone convergence has sapped the sales of point-and-shoot digital cameras, there is no question that photography professionals and hobbyists continue to choose single-lens reflex cameras, for obvious reasons.   "Digital still cameras won't go away until the technology gets way better than it is," Selburn said. Even an 8-megapixel camera in a smartphone is no match for standalones, which as a rule offer larger viewing displays, bigger CMOS image sensors and more powerful lenses, he said.   Personal navigation devices Say goodbye to the insincere, synthetic female voice that does nothing except tell you what to do. (Note: Easy but potentially offensive and possibly marriage-complicating joke omitted).   According to the NPD Group, sales of standalone personal navigation devices (PNDs) tanked last year. Through the first 11 months of 2010, PND unit shipments were down 9 percent compared to the like period of 2009, and PND revenue declined 22 percent year-to-year in that time frame, according to NPD.   Even as they are becoming dirt cheap, PNDs can't compete with the built-in GPS functionality in smartphones and a growing number of car models.   Pico projectors This is a relatively new market that is enjoying rapid growth, but it's not far off from being "Flipped" by convergence.   According to an industry survey conducted by Pacific Media Associates, the worldwide market for pico projectors—small handheld projectors, many of which are powered by Texas Instruments Inc.'s DLP technology—is expected to grow from about 700,000 units in 2010 to 22 million units in 2014.   But there are already several handsets that feature an integrated pico projector, and more are on their way. It's hard to imagine the standalone pico projector market to become truly sizeable when many people will end up having one in their smartphone, almost by default. Standalone pico projectors appear destined to be cut down before their prime by convergence.   Digital audio recorder Umm, okay, so this was never a truly sizable market and probably never really had a chance to become one. IHS doesn't even track sales of these devices. But these days nearly every smartphone and even most feature phones offer the capability to record sound files. Standalone digital audio recorders will still enjoy popularity in niche areas (we journalists still appreciate them, when they are charged and we can get them to work properly). But the market, such as it was, was knee-capped by convergence.    E-book readers Here's another new and rapidly growing market that is being undercut by convergence. But in this case, it's the media tablet, not the smartphone, that is the chief culprit.   According to IHS, sales of e-book readers are projected to grow from just over 1 million units in 2008—the year they first appeared—to more than 20 million this year and nearly 41 million in 2015. Not bad, eh?   But it could have been so much better. The iPad and other media tablets that offer the capability to read e-books—though not as elegantly—will siphon off untold sales from standalone e-book readers.   "E-book readers are still in a very high growth phase," Selburn said, "though it's expected to flatten out in a few years. Media tablets don't do as good a job for reading books as a Kindle or a Nook. But you can get to where it's good enough that I don't want to have to carry two things around."   Video games "The only uni-task devices not under any particular pressure are video game consoles and handhelds," Selburn said. Video game players, he said, demand a very high quality experience.   The market for video game consoles and handhelds cycles around new product releases from Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and the like. According to IHS, the market for video game consoles grew from 33 million units in 2003 to peak at 55.3 million units in 2008. The firm expects console sales to slip to 44.2 million units this year and continue slipping in 2012 and 2013 before returning to rapid growth to reach 54.2 million units in 2015.   For handhelds, IHS projects sales to grow from 27.2 million units this year to 40.6 million in 2014 before slipping to 37.4 million in 2015.   Bottom line: You can have a ball killing time playing Angry Birds while waiting to board your delayed flight to Chicago, but true gamers want more. And they are willing to pay for it.    Dylan McGrath EE Times