IoT is undoubtedly the new impetus to the development of the semiconductor industry and embedded systems.Its births push the market demand for many new enabling technologies, including: • The new generation of ultra-low power IC • The new wireless communication protocol • The use of New data processing technology for analysis and cloud computing
As data on the Internet flows in EOBs, the Internet of Things is driving the demand for low-power, high-performance memory that must also have the features of a small pin count to accommodate small, form factor applications . Microcontrollers have adapted to this new requirement by incorporating special low-power modes such as deep power consumption and deep sleep. In addition, the performance (clock frequency and feature set) of these microcontrollers varies with To keep up with this pace, memory designers must constantly adjust so that customers do not have to worry about the trade-off between performance and power consumption.
Retail As an area of growing prominence to the Internet of Things, this article is the last in a series of reports focused on trends in semiconductor memory in this area. Large stores have begun to use the Internet of Things to interact with their customer base and to target Personal shoppers tailor the personalized shopping experience Retail staff throughout the store can connect devices to each other and connect to corporate headquarters and cloud resources.The ultimate goal is to deploy such technologies and use the data collected to drive sales and build Customer loyalty, managing inventory and improving operational efficiency.
In the previous article, we looked at two of the earliest Internet-enabled devices in the retail are-point-of-sale terminals and e-shelf tags-the latest generation of smart POS terminals, which are typically retailers that track customer shopping habits, manage inventory and promote The first step to loyalty is to have all the major POS terminal vendors come out with models that can do these functions, which are often powerful, compact, battery-powered and highly secure, and these are also requirements for devices Semiconductor chips used in the challenge posed.You can learn in this series of the first part of the article on POS terminals.Electronic shelf labels are used in many stores is relatively new types of equipment.The shelf device can be programmed, Ability to update bids and track consumer purchases based on promotions and inventory, and they automate tedious tasks while eliminating discrepancies and delays, so these devices provide retailers with valuable analytics with a relatively low investment. You Here you can read the article on the shelf label.
In this article, we show you the last technology that has been introduced in multiple stores and will continue to be widely adopted in the near future.These devices will provide consumers with a more attractive shopping experience, at the same time Helps retailers achieve inventory management and improve customer service.
Wearable technology may be the most prevalent (and most hyped) technology that emerges as the Internet of Things thrives, not only useful in many aspects of everyday life, including recording your fitness data, answering calls and sending notifications, and They can also integrate many other aspects of our lives.Wearable devices can bring great advantages to the smart retail industry.For example, shoppers can be offered customized offers, payouts, and even guided shoppers to shop depending on the shopping list In addition, staff at these retail stores can also use these devices to do their jobs more efficiently, resulting in higher levels of completion, with some wearable devices simplifying employee productivity in both inventory and customer relationship management.
The demand for semiconductors in wearable devices is very different from most other smart shopping applications, and the semiconductors are primarily influenced by power, bandwidth, and size, which are also unique features of this series. Suitable for memory that requires small form factor, low power consumption and high bandwidth.
PCBs in wearable devices are extremely small and can be placed on the palm of your hand or worn on your wrist, which means the memory needs to be as small as possible, ideally not larger than the die. Other than wafer-scale packaging, other means are difficult to implement In addition, today's wearables have the same functional requirements as their mobile counterparts, with HD screens, powerful applications, continuous data capture from multiple sensors and the ability to run large numbers of back-end Mission.This rigorous demand led to high-end processors and peripherals indispensable.
Because wearables can only run on small batteries at high speeds, their power consumption must also be very low, and for smaller wearables, their battery life should be at least a day.If increasing the battery size will result in wearable The weight and size of the device increase, resulting in a reduction in the aesthetics of the device.
The typical components of wearable devices are shown in Figure 1. The most power hungry component is the display, but power varies widely depending on whether the display is LCD (highest power), OLED or e-ink (lowest) The general architecture of the remaining components is similar across all wearables.Cortex M4 is one of the most widely used controllers with low power consumption and excellent performance.The Cortex M4 controller has an internal RAM size of 384KB 768KB. Despite their small size, these devices perform complex tasks and collect large amounts of data from a wide range of sensors Airborne RAM backs up data at lower standby currents, supports devices that store sensor data and builds devices for Bluetooth transmission Protocol packets or store the current display contents while the screen is awake.
Several event tracking devices available on the market display text messages, phone announcements, and calendar events on the smartphone they are connected to, all of which require extra storage on the system Low-Power Expansion with 4 to 8 Mb Space RAM (volatile or non-volatile) solves this type of problem Table 1 shows the power consumption of these common components.
Table 1: Typical current consumption of wearable device components
Wearables use a variety of memories for different functions. Common memory types are non-volatile memory and RAM. Although NOR flash is the most common type of non-volatile memory, DRAM and SRAM are also used for random access tasks such as Caching and buffering High-end wearable devices such as large smartwatches, smart glasses, and virtual reality helmets typically use DRAM because of their higher storage density.Microsoft devices such as activity trackers and small smart watches typically use SRAM for higher density Lower power consumption for memory Because they use smaller batteries and expect longer battery life than larger wearables, they can not use DRAMs that result in higher power consumption due to refreshing Between DRAM and SRAM When choosing, you need to make a trade-off between capacity and power consumption.
This article and previous articles describe only a few components that make the shopping experience smarter, as well as the wide range of cameras, sensors, beacons and displays that support large amounts of data analysis, due to their low memory requirements or years of use No changes for the moment, and there is currently no need to focus on them.When these components are widely used and developed beyond its current scope of use, we will re-examine and study how they affect the semiconductor design.In any case, the basic requirements of the device will not change To minimize power consumption, reduce size, and increase reliability without affecting performance For more information on SRAM with Deep-Sleep mode, see this application note. For more information on designing systems with HyperFlash memory For information, see this application note.