Embedded World 2013


Turning off the juice


Steve Rogerson looks at some of the low-power announcements made at Embedded World in Nuremberg


R


educing size and power was once again one of the major themes around the halls in Nuremberg for


Embedded World. And leading that fight was ARM, the Cambridge company that has become the dominant architecture in mobile systems.


“It seems like every year, more and more people are interested in what ARM are doing,” said Gary Atkinson, director of the company’s embedded segment. “We are in a healthy shape. All the SBC guys – the Kontrons, Advantechs and so on – have ARM-based families and they have done that because their customers have asked them for it.”


seeing Android on ARM as a good development platform for anything that needed a graphical user interface. He said, however, that power efficiency was the key and pointed out that Freescale had announced a Cortex-M0+ part at the show that it claimed was the most power efficient MCU in the world right now. This was the Kinetis KL02 MCU. Freescale also announced that it was licensing the Cortex-A50 series for future versions of its i.MX applications processor and Qoriq communications processor product lines.


Commenting on attempts by Intel to move into ARM territory Atkinson was dismissive.


“Intel has tried to produce lower power Atom parts,” he said. “But they are putting their i3, i5 and i7 parts into boxes and they need heatsinks, whereas our SoCs are designed to go into a mobile phone where there is no room for a heatsink. A small plastic box is a lot easier to ship round the world than a big metal one.”


Shipping metal boxes is Pentair, which used to until recently trade as Schroff in Europe. It attacked the low power market with a series of small form factor modular systems.


“They are all Com solutions,” said Christian Ganninger, systems products manager, “with only one processor and limited power based on ARM or Atom processors.”


Gary Atkinson: “The embedded market does not move very quickly.”


This, he said, was the result of years of work because of the long cycles often prevalent in embedded. “It is a long process,” he said. “The embedded market does not move very quickly.”


Atkinson said now, though, people were 20 April 2013


The aim is for small form factor modules that still have high processing or graphics power, modularity, expandability or redundancy but are smaller than traditional 19in rack systems. “We found there was a gap,” said Ganninger, “so we brought out these boxes to meet this market. It is a modular approach.”


A basic system – 1U high, 250mm wide AMC chassis – can have two Micro TCA, Compact PCI or other modules and go up to five or six pieces depending on the application. The rack can be mounted or standalone.


Components in Electronics


Michael Buckley: “This is about going really small and really low power.”


The second small form factor approach Pentair is using is a subrack with different mounting options. This is 3U tall, 205mm deep and 28HP wide.


“This can use VME, Compact PCI, VPX, whatever you like,” said Ganninger. “It holds five boards plus power supply. And you can attach a fan.”


Power forecasting Part of the design process though is forecasting the power and this can be very error prone, which is why Silicon Labs unveiled the Precision 32 software and hardware development tools that let engineers increase the power efficiency of their 32bit embedded designs. “We have a tool built on the existing applications builder,” said Joshua Norem, senior applications engineer for MCU products. “When you go in and configure a device, you can also give it a power estimate. It comes up with a power number and it gives you an idea of where the power is being used.” The Power Estimator tool gives developers a top-level graphical view of how a Precision 32 MCU uses power in


active and sleep mode. The tool lets developers adjust power usage at the onset of a project even without having development hardware. It automatically updates the system design with configuration changes, allowing developers to optimise each mode for the lowest power. “You can see exactly what is draining the battery,” said Norem. “You go inside the part and see what is being done. You get a picture of where the power is going.”


Joshua Norem: “You can see exactly what is draining the battery.”


A companion tool, Power Tips, provides


software configuration guidance that helps developers reduce current consumption. Lattice Semiconductor announced the smallest of its FPGA family – the Ice 40 LP384 with a capacity of 384 LUTs (7680 gates). Static core power consumption is 25µW and package size is 2.5 by 2.5mm with 2.0 by 2.0mm planned. “This is about going really small and


really low power,” said Michael Buckley, European sales manager. “This will be the very smallest of our FPGA family and with a lot of logic. We can hit low power, size and cost levels that no-one has achieved before.”


For very high volumes, prices are down to US$0.5 each. They are aimed at consumer type applications such as smart phones, which tend to be high volume. “It can manage loads of sensors, and


there are lots of sensors in phones,” said Buckley. “You need to offload that work from the processor. This is a programmable device that can do that. And sensors are in everything, so there are other applications, such as medical.”


It can also be used to save battery power by handling things on laptops and tablets when the processor goes to sleep. “It is competing against MPUs, MCUs and ASSPs, but it is fully programmable,” said Buckley. “And it is so small, you don’t want to drop one on the floor as it is almost impossible to see.” This year’s Embedded World had around 900 exhibitors in five halls and more than 22,500 trade visitors and conference participants from 58 countries. And more than 1000 students turned up on student day. ■


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