Multicore, virtualization, and lots of little microcontroller chips are in the tea leaves this year. New technologies like Serial ATA (SATA) and PCI Express will materialize onto more chips and slowly move down the food chain.
Continually dwindling transistor sizes will transform new processors and microcontrollers, adding intelligence to peripherals and hardware acceleration. They also will boost functionality and drop costs.
In addition, more circuitry has produced a greater level of connectivity that's changing how designers approach a problem. Low-end sensors and controls can be linked with Ethernet and wireless protocols like ZigBee.
8-Bit Surprises The high end gets the glamour even as the low end continues to thrive. The William Baldwin Group, a research firm, noted the growth of 8-bit microcontrollers in a recent survey (Fig. 1). The 8-bit platforms will steadily climb in both functionality and performance.
A significant chunk of this growth likely is due to the shrinking of size, power requirements, and price. For example, Microchip's 8-bit PIC10F microcontroller comes in a 2- by 3-mm dual flat no-lead package (Fig. 2).
The only technology that seems to be disappearing would be 4-bit microcontrollers. Look for a little more consistency in the 32-bit microcontroller space, with ARM pushing its Cortex architectures and Freescale with its popular ColdFire architecture. The driving factor will be highquality tools, many based on Eclipse.
Furthermore, look for even better power-consumption numbers at the low end of the 32-bit spectrum. They probably will never match the low end of the 8- and 16bit platforms, but 32-bit MCUs will give developers higher performance and a better programming platform.
High-Speed Serial The 32- and 64bit microcontrollers are starting to sport SATA, PCI Express, and Serial RapidIO interfaces. The host chip sets for the 32and 64-bit processors, such as AMD's Athlon and Opteron and Intel's Core Duo and Xeon lines, already bring these interfaces to the high-performance computing realm.
Throughput is only one reason for switching to the newer, high-performance serial interfaces. Pin-count and packagesize reduction are other major factors for the move. For once, packages may be getting smaller as performance and functionality go up.
SATA will push IDE in the embedded space as hard-disk drives continue to flood the market. The smaller cable connections are a definite plus for embedded applications, and access to External SATA and ExpressCard technologies will be new aspects to look for this year. The desktop and laptop markets will lead the way, but embedded is sure to follow, thanks to the simplified physical and electrical interfaces compared to IDE and PCMCIA.
PCI Express won't push PCI out of the embedded space this year. In fact, the number of microcontrollers supporting
PCI will increase, due to the availability of PCI peripherals and the vast reservoir of PCI design talent.
Always the unsung hero, it's remarkable how much USB has changed all of computing. It brings low-cost development tools to market. It has consolidated the low- to medium-speed peripheral interface arena. And it has become the de facto standard for mobile devices, even though the plethora of connector standards is enough to baffle the best embedded designer.
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