How The IoT Will Change The Chip (techcrunch.com)

"Get ready for some big changes in the 'silicon' of Silicon Valley," writes tech CEO Narbeh Derhacobian who argues that the need to build tens of billions of connected sensor devices will change the way computers get built. "Just like smartphone owners like to pick and choose which apps they want, IoT manufacturers may want to shop for components individually without being locked into a single fab." An anonymous reader summarizes his article on TechCrunch: Thousands of different hardware devices, each selling around one million units, "would suggest the need for a much greater diversity of chip configurations than we've seen to date." Currently smartphones are engineered using a "System on a Chip" design where all the components are "locked into a single manufacturing process," but Derhacobian predicts chip manufacturers will continue a trend of moving towards a "System in a Package" approach -- "packing components closely together, without the complete, end-to-end integration... In a smart, connected world, sensor requirements could vary greatly from factory to factory, not to mention between industries as varied as agriculture, urban planning and automotive."

"In some ways, the great trends of the PC and smartphone eras were toward standardization of devices. Apple's great vision was understanding that people prefer a beautiful, integrated package, and don't need many choices in hardware. But in software it's generally the opposite. People have different needs, and want to select the apps and programs that work best for them."

Comments

yawn again

[thinkwaitfast]

Embedded engineers have been doing this and dealing with these problems for decades. It really is their job description and what they do all day.

I think this only shows how isolated some people are from the rest of the world. Nothing new to see here.

Re: yawn again

[Darinbob]

Agile is a pain. New style programmers on jobs where everything can be broken down into two week sprints, like web pages. Continual testing is extremely difficult on many embedded systems where testing has to be done manually or with specially crafted builds (taking more time than the original code). It's doable, but I don't need some snot nosed kid telling me that I have to use the latest fad and that my life will become easier. Agile makes programmers work harder and more hours, with less long term planning.

Oh, stateless transactions and interfaces are old technology. But good job for people thinking they discovered a new concept.

Staggering!

[SpaghettiPattern]

I didn't realize until now that iOS apps run Android.

I'm not saying the article is wrong.

[Hognoxious]

I'm not saying the article is wrong, because I'm not really sure if it actually says anything.

Acer did this in the 1990s

[Solandri]

They'd grab whatever components were cheapest at the time and put them together to build a PC. You'd buy one Acer model PC, really like it and recommend it to a friend who would buy the exact same model, and his would come with completely different components and suck. It's how Acer earned their reputation as a low-rate PC manufacturer that they're still trying to shake today. Routers occasionally run into this problem as well, as hardware changes from revision 2 to revision 3 result in incompatibilities or different behaviors even though two routers are "the same model."

If you want to dumb down the software and use non-standardized hardware, be my guest. But you'd better make damn sure the user experience is consistent across all the different hardware versions you're using. Otherwise you're saving money on the front end just to end up paying more at the support end.

Anyone spouting about the Internet of Things...

[argStyopa]

...immediately identifies themselves as someone I need not take seriously.

Nobody rational GIVES A SHIT about connecting their coffeemaker to the internet.
Anyone reasonably skeptical will have nothing to do with the idea of connecting their front door locks to the internet.

Short version: it's the latest stupid internet fad, interesting only to the circle-jerk of people promoting such things.

Re:Don't use IoT

[Applehu Akbar]

Just like all the other times, the home will be the last place where IoT is applied. It will rule the commercial and industrial world for a generation or two before hoi polloi trusts it in the home. We will see bridge beams that continually report their own stresses, freight containers that log their location, aircraft that log flight data to satellites instead of to onboard black boxes, and building load compensation weights that continually adjust themselves.

Re:Don't use IoT

[Darinbob]

That's consumer IoT. I think it's a dumb idea, and I work in the IoT industry (non-consumer). Things like Nest are silly and ship with broken features (horrendous security), and Google is naive in trying to enter a field they know nothing about. Everyone's working at cross purposes everywhere, multiple competing standards that are not anywhere near what is required (networks too chatty for battery use, or bulky data like XML, etc).