Consumer IoT
Consumer demand for—and reliance on—smarter, feature-rich connected IoT devices continues to grow, with 5G and the broader coverage and transformational user experiences it promises poised to fuel still more demand. With that demand, however, comes the challenge of delivering increasingly complex IoT devices while reducing the cost and power consumption.
IoT devices are forecast to generate over 90 ZB of data by 2025, more than 50% of the total data generated.1
Consumer spending on IoT solutions is predicted to grow 13.9% year over year in 2020.2
1Data Age 2025, November 2018, refreshed May 2020, seagate.com/files/www-content/our-story/trends/files/dataage-idc-report-07-2020.pdf
2IDC, June 2020, Worldwide Spending on the Internet of Things….
Consumer IoT MCUs
MCUs are the intelligence inside most of today’s IoT devices, ranging from smart wearables to smart home appliances to smart cards. Consumer demand for these devices is fueling an explosion of IoT devices, with a TAM of 25 billion units projected by 2024 for the consumer MCU market.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES® (GF®) understands that the associated ultra-low power, value-optimized and high performance requirements critical to meeting this demand is top of mind for semiconductor chip designers.
Consumer IoT MCUs using 22FDX™ FD-SOI & 40/110/150 nm bulk CMOS
GLOBALFOUNDRIES® (GF®) offers a range of purpose-optimized consumer IoT MCU solutions, enabling designers to meet the area, performance, power and cost targets for their hardware.
Meet competing requirements
GF’s 40 nm, 110 nm and 150 nm solutions, built on a bulk CMOS platform, offer high value, feature-rich, power-optimized and low mask-count options for developing cost-sensitive consumer IoT MCUs. Designers can take advantage of supplier integrity for a time to market advantage.
Purpose built
22FDX® offers a combination of full SoC integration (eMRAM, analog power and RF elements on one chip), logic scaling (for AI and security features) for > 20% smaller footprint* and lower BOM costs. The unique 22FDX SOI architecture gives designers additional power mode throttling capabilities with easy to use back-gate biasing solutions to reduce power > 50%* to extend battery life without compromising performance.
Differentiate with confidence
A rich portfolio of MCU-optimized IP and reference designs helps clients stand out from their competition, and get to market faster.
Edge AI accelerators
Home security cameras and smart doorbells. Kitchen appliances that communicate with homeowners, and each other. Always-on, voice-activated personal assistants. The sophistication of IoT devices is increasing dramatically as the demand for smart features like face, speech and object recognition grows, and as processing and intelligent reaction move to the edge. All while protection of the user’s digital identity remains a critical concern.
Innovative edge AI accelerators are designed to handle these challenges, significantly speeding up inferencing at the edge—while concurrently improving privacy—by enabling local processing instead of sending data to the cloud for analysis and response.
— Steve Teig, Perceive CEO
Edge AI accelerators using 12LP/12LP+ and 22FDX™
The 12LP/12LP+ FinFET and 22FDX™ FD-SOI edge AI accelerator solutions from GLOBALFOUNDRIES® (GF®) are optimized to reduce latency and actionable response times, which enable enhanced security and data privacy by managing data at the edge. The purpose-built solutions combine a spectrum of power, performance and area advantages that enable chip designers to choose the best fit for their standalone or embedded AI SoCs.
Accelerate AI at the edge
GF 12LP/12LP+ and 22FDX solutions are optimized to deliver the performance horsepower you need to handle the demands of AI inferencing at the edge, instead of in the data center.
Solve the power challenge
Leverage the low dynamic power and best-in-class leakage power from 22FDX, excellent thermal performance from 12LP/12LP+ and a low-voltage SRAM available with 12LP+ and 22FDX to minimize power consumption in AC-wired or battery-powered devices.
Differentiate with confidence
Take advantage of a combination of AI-tuned features, including the AI reference package available with 12LP/12LP+ and the eMRAM AI storage core available in automotive grade 1-qualified 22FDX to stand out from your competition.
Featured Resources
*Assumes typical power consumption of edge device is ten to hundreds of watts. 22FDX can achieve 20 milliwatts power consumption.
Smart audio/hearables and wearables
1.54 billion wireless headset units will be shipped by 2024
There is an explosion in digital infotainment and wearable devices, enabled by Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technology. In parallel, consumers are expecting these devices to deliver ever better user experiences, made possible by features such as high-resolution audio streaming, active noise cancellation, AI voice assist, real time translation, authentication and more. IC designers must deliver all these features, while simultaneously maximizing the time needed between battery charges and in cost- and space-constrained form factors.
Smart audio/hearables using 22FDX™ RF with eMRAM
Current hearable products need as many as 40 chips
Best-in-class leakage and power benefits that can extend battery life up to twofold combined with a rich feature set make 22FDX® RF solutions from GLOBALFOUNDRIES® (GF®) a superior choice for true wireless stereo (TWS) SoC applications. Designers can take advantage of exceptional RF performance for seamless wireless connectivity, performance and area-optimized digital elements for enhanced AI capability and an optimized eMRAM that can replace embedded flash for area and power savings.
Optimized for on-the-go audio
22FDX RF offers superior active power (0.4 V), ultra-low leakage (<1 pA/µm), and excellent area efficiency (> 5M gates/mm2), combined with industry-leading analog capabilities (noise, mismatch, short channel effect).
Elevating the audio experience
22FDX is an outstanding choice for single-chip TWS solutions, enabling designers to take advantage of superior RF PA performance, an LDMOS (5 V-6.5 V) for integrating the battery charger and power management features and a qualified eMRAM solution to enhance the user experience.
Faster time to market
With 22FDX, designers leverage the silicon-validated elements, including low leakage and low power design libraries, adaptive body bias for power-state throttling and a wide range of memory options (OTP/MTP/eMRAM)—along with connectivity and security IP—for differentiation and a time to market advantage.
Wireless connectivity
By 2025, there will more than 40 billion connected IoT devices.*
While wireless connectivity is becoming pervasive, the evolving standards in Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi and Zigbee combined with the accelerating rollout of 5G hardware add complexity. Keeping pace with the challenges of handling multiple standards in shrinking form factors—with battery life measured in days, not hours—requires new avenues of innovation in wireless SoC architecture.
*IDC, June 2020, idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS45213219
Wireless connectivity using 22FDX™ RF
Consumer IoT hardware is performance, power, area and cost sensitive. All while being reliable enough to stand up to constant use.
22FDX™ RF solutions from GLOBALFOUNDRIES® (GF®), built on a 22 nm FD-SOI platform, enable designers to take advantage of superior power efficiency and performance while integrating multiple features into a single chip for significant area and BOM cost advantages. And because 22FDX is automotive grade 1 qualified, the solutions offer the high reliability that consumer IoT applications rely on.
Space & power miser
22FDX RF enables the industry’s only single-chip modem for > 20% area savings, while adaptive body bias gives designers the ability to cut dynamic power by 30% and leakage power by 60%.*
Optimize for consumer IoT
Take advantage of the IoT-specific capabilities and features available with 22FDX RF, including best-in-class RF sensitivity, eMRAM and direct battery connect PMIC integration.
Inject innovation
Leverage the FDXcelerator™ ecosystem, a comprehensive, silicon-validated IP portfolio and reference designs to differentiate today, and tap into the strong FDX™ roadmap to 12 nm for planning next-gen, future-ready chips.
*Area reduction compared to 22 nm bulk CMOS. Dynamic and leakage power reduction compared to 12 nm FinFET.