Will SoC completely replace generalized microcontrollers?

Jim Stewart wrote:
> Telenochek wrote:
> 
>>   I am wondering if the SoC (ARM/AMBA architecture)  (where a
>> whole system with upgradeable hardware modules/ IP cores can be stuffed
>> inside a single chip) will make all kinds of generalized
>> microcontrollers (like PIC) obsolete.
> 
> You're talking apples and oranges.
> 
> The PIC excels at simple jobs where the development
> time is measured in days.  Hang some stuff on the
> I/O's and write some quick code.  The parts cost
> is measured in cents.

IMHO most of embedded devices do not live up to >1k quantities, there is
probably plenty of system integration teams that care about the budget
and do not have the comfort of own ASIC or spending hundreeds on
universal SBCs with volumes of 10-100. If they do not find required
device off shelf, or if

  device_price * expected_volume > 2-4 weeks_of_development

they choose to create their own. There is advantage of higher control
over functionality and bugs and subsequent needs for the device can be
fullfiled for the price of parts and labour.

We have all these specialized embedded devices being designed and
produced in 1-2 digit quantities each year. I tend to agree with OP that
there is a need for highly reconfigurable highly integrated ~30 MIPS SoC.

On 28 Nov 2005 11:39:49 -0800, the renowned "Telenochek"
<interpasha@hotmail.com> wrote:

>> I expect a continuing trend for
>> more and better peripherals to be included on-chip.
>
>So in your opinion instead of having highly customizable chip and
>systems, the trend is to offer a wider variety of chips for developers
>to choose from?

Well, that's a different question. 

It can be made highly (?) customizable by simply throwing everything
but the kitchen sink onto the chip (as hard logic) along with some
muxes and allowing the programmer to select what goes to the (limited)
I/O lines. Already you're seeing that happen with many micros
including low-end 10-bit ADCs and such like as standard. As well, the
number of slightly different micros in given families has been
expanding greatly, so I'm not sure any trend one way or the other is
yet evident. I suspect that it's business strategy driven rather than
depending on technology beyond the obvious application of Moore's law.

Many companies also make their own business decision to standardize on
chips that are not the absolute minimum required so that they can
decrease stocking requirements, improve time to market, and get better
quantity discounts. 


Best regards, 
Spehro Pefhany
-- 
"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Telenochek wrote:
> Sure I understand that right now FPGA dev tools put a heavy burden on
> the developer. Same goes for ARM development.

I've heard similar arguments for software development: "The powerful 
UML-based tools will make conventional programming languages like C/C++ 
obsolete for most programming."

In fact, I know of one company that replaced a legacy 8051 design 
(written in C and assembly) with a new one based on a ColdFire and 
developed entirely in state-machine UML that is compiled down to 
executable code with a custom run-time environment.

They seem happy with their new implementation, although they managed to 
replace a $30 BoM with a $100 BoM, upped their power usage, and upped 
their physical volume.  And (IMHO) made their code largely 
unmaintainable to "conventional" embedded systems developers.  Ever seen 
a UML state machine for bit-banging I2C?  Blech.

A few years back I was convinced that we'd be seeing large-scale use of 
Java for embedded devices, mostly based on the availability of cheap 
Java programmers and MCU that speak Java natively.  Hasn't happened yet. 
  Now I doubt that it ever will, although Ajile is still making their 
CPUs and seems sustainable, if not profitable.

Horses for courses.

Kelly

Telenochek wrote:
>>I expect a continuing trend for
>>more and better peripherals to be included on-chip.
> 
> 
> So in your opinion instead of having highly customizable chip and
> systems, the trend is to offer a wider variety of chips for developers
> to choose from?

Yes, that is happening already. ARM uC's start at $1.47,
and what you get for <$1 is always improving.
You now have ARM devices with 12 bit ADC/DAC and ones with
USB and Ethernet - and all these are true single chip devices.

Look at the lineups from Freescale, Microchip, Philips, Atmel....

FPGA solutions still have a serious memory blind-spot : ie they
are not actually SoC, but system on multiple chips....
Until the code memory issue is solved, they are a niche
solution. ( relative to microcontrollers )

The Atmel FpSLIC is a classic example of the problems in so called SoC.
Another example of a company that only offered "highly customizable" 
devices, is Triscend -> never hit critical mass....

Microcontrollers ship in huge volumes, orders of magnitude greater than
FPGAs, or any SoC solutions.

FPGA's are also a little like PCs in their price models : You get more
for your $$,every year, but the absolute cheapest price is not dropping 
- Indeed, on some CPLDs, the lowest price node is actually increasing...


-jg

Telenochek wrote:
>> Probably not too far if one of the bigger software vendors thinks
>> they can sell enough units at about $10,000 each to pay for
>> a few million dollars in development cost.   I wouldn't hold
>> my breath waiting for it, though!@   ;-)
> 
>> When you get that package,  you can then figure out how to pay
>> the  license fees for the IP  that will be included.  I suspect
>> that will involve lawyers!   ;-(
> 
> Xilinx development tools don't cost that much if you don't buy "the
> latest & the greatest".
> In fact, the WebPack costs nothing.
> And Spartan3 Starter Kit costs only 100$
> Just the Spartan3 Starter Kit alone with the WebPack have the
> capabilities unthinkable just a decade ago.  200K reprogrammable gates
> of completely custom logic?!
> 
> IP cores & software are just a piece of plastic, that costs nothing to
> produce apart from development costs (which can be a lot, of course).
> Provided the software sells enough the price can easily go down.
> Of course putting the design in silicon will be expensive...
> 

Typical IP cores for FPGAs for things like CAN controllers, Ethernet, 
DDR memory interfaces, USB, etc., cost many thousands of dollars, and 
typically impose restrictions such as the devices they work with, or 
being locked to a single workstation.  When you take into account the 
cost of the FPGA space to implement them, the additional hardware 
components (you will always need external driver chips), along with the 
development costs, including testing and debugging, and you see that the 
only make sense if you are making very large quantities, or have very 
specific requirements.  There are plenty of situations where FPGAs with 
such cores are appropriate - especially if you already have the FPGA on 
board for specialised logic.  And there are plenty of things that an 
FPGA can do better than anything else.  But there is no way they are 
going to replace microcontrollers or other specific hardware devices - 
there is some overlap, but they are basically complementary technologies.

Telenochek wrote:

>What would be the problem will be with replacing almost all MCU-based
>systems with SoC?

Show me one that costs well under ten cents (including all support
components including bypass caps and crystal) in quantities of a 
hundred thousand per day and then perhaps I might consider switching...

-- 
Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/>
<a href="http://www.guymacon.com/">
http://www.guymacon.com/
</a>

Telenochek wrote:

>Jim Granville wrote.
>
>>Price, and operational details, like battery life, Size etc.
>
>Actually, size of a SoC is much smaller than of a system composed 
>of individual hardware pieces put together on a board.

Try designing a digital wristwatch or in-ear hearing aid using one 
if you think that size and battery life aren't an issue.

-- 
Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com/>
<a href="http://www.guymacon.com/">
http://www.guymacon.com/
</a>

For high volume, low cost applications the PIC and other chips will survive.
Larger Applications (i.e. 16 or 32 bit bit MCU with lots of peripherals and 
additional circuitry) will likely have an alternative to be moved to FPGA, 
using soft IP cores.

Have a look at www.alium.com -> Nexar.

They are on this course.
That is: use an FPGA, add a soft IP core (anything from 8051 core to 
PPC/ARM) and some soft IP library modules and you have a self designed 
processor. Target specific compilers are part of this Embedde Deveopment 
system so you do not have to do everything in VHDL.

You do not have to be a FPGA or VHDL epert to work with this system.

I guess it is just a matter of time when this concept will be accepted as a 
serious alternative to conventional MCU solutions.


grtnx
/janh



"Telenochek" <interpasha@hotmail.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag 
news:1133201249.400996.183070@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>  I am wondering if the SoC (ARM/AMBA architecture)  (where a
> whole system with upgradeable hardware modules/ IP cores can be stuffed
> inside a single chip) will make all kinds of generalized
> microcontrollers (like PIC) obsolete.
> When PIC microcontrollers are used, they often need external hardware
> to help them, DSP blocks cannot be integrated into the chip at will
> (its all up to Microchip, whatever they decide to include in a chip).
>    Just seems to me like SoC will eventually replace every MCU based
> system, because of the processing power, and application-specific
> flexibility in hardware. And almost all systems can use extra
> processing power, capabilities & etc.
>    Maybe a traffic light with video camera and remote alerts for
> speeders + array radar sensing of speeding cars & reporting their
> position via GPS. I'm not saying that developing a supercomputing
> traffic light is a very high priority task, just using it as an
> illustration of stuffing more capability into into a simple system.
>
> What would be the problem will be with replacing almost all MCU-based
> systems with SoC?
> 

Jan Homuth wrote:
> For high volume, low cost applications the PIC and other chips will survive.
> Larger Applications (i.e. 16 or 32 bit bit MCU with lots of peripherals and
> additional circuitry) will likely have an alternative to be moved to FPGA,
> using soft IP cores.
>
> Have a look at www.alium.com -> Nexar.
>
> They are on this course.
> That is: use an FPGA, add a soft IP core (anything from 8051 core to
> PPC/ARM) and some soft IP library modules and you have a self designed
> processor. Target specific compilers are part of this Embedde Deveopment
> system so you do not have to do everything in VHDL.
>
> You do not have to be a FPGA or VHDL epert to work with this system.
>
> I guess it is just a matter of time when this concept will be accepted as a
> serious alternative to conventional MCU solutions.
>
>
> grtnx
> /janh
>

Unfortunately, the power consumption of FPGAs is still way too high in
many applications. I can get 32 bit processing with peripherals at a
fraction of the power of an FPGA with a soft core.
To a great extent, it's inherent in the design, using SRAM LUTs. Unless
and until this is addressed, FPGA SoC will probably not reach critical
mass.

Cheers

PeteS

Thank you all for your responses!
There are some really nice things here that I didn't think about
(like difficulty manufacturing precision analog circuitry, rf
circuitry, fast memory & etc on the same chip).

I think I need to clarify/modify my original question:

See, my personal opinion is that if you can find one IC that has all
the capabilities your system needs (maybe IC with 4 pins is enough or
maybe 100M reprogrammable gates is just enough, doesn't matter), then
you are better off selecting that IC rather than combining a bunch of
ICs on a PCB which combined give you the same capability as the one IC.

That's exactly what my definition of a SoC is: one chip has all the
capabilities for your project.
So whats the problem with generalized MCUs?
The problem (as I see it) is that it doesn't matter how large the
manufacturer product lineup selection is, most projects always require
something extra that the chips are not going to have. So you get a
bunch of chips with all the needed capabilities and you place them on
your PCB, etc etc.
But in the end (maybe distant future) aren't you much better off having
all of these chips  combined on a single IC?

Which is why I was sort of thinking (in my original question) that
future designers are much more likely to be building specialized ICs
(SoC) for their projects rather than develop PCBs.
Again, as I said earlier, if someone is selling a chip that has all the
capabilities you need, then there is your SoC, you don't need to
develop a large PCB, or develop your own IC/SoC :)

Do you guys think that future designers will be transitioning to
designing custom ICs for their projects rather than PCBs?
 Or using *highly customizable IC platforms* rather than   develop
PCBs?

I sort of doubt that it will be FPGAs :
Since the hardware configuration is stored on board, rather than being
physically implemented, they are always going to be power hungry
(unless the gates start consuming 10^(-16) Amps quiescent).
And if you have a good design (that is out of the prototyping stage)
with reasonable volume its probably better to have a *hardwired* but
customizable/flexible chip.