Today's announcement by Macronix of a 256-Mbit serial NOR flash chip is interesting from a capabilities point of view, but leaves a number questions regarding market pull, interface standards and overall market size that makes me wonder who will follow Macronix to create a storm in this teacup?

Or, will the connectivity of every embedded device change the landscape completely and push the odds more in Macronix's favor?

From Macronix's point of view, the 256-Mbit introduction is an effort to secure the lion's share of what it expects will be a $2 billion market by 2014, up from $645 million today (figures from Web-Feet Research used by Macronix in its positioning presentation). That's a sizable chunk of change no matter where you sit. However, when put in perspective, it may be that Macronix's competitors have bigger opportunities to chase.

I spoke with Web-Feet's CEO and founder, Alan Niebel. He said serial NOR is $654 million out of a total $5 billion NOR flash market today, and by 2014 that total will reach $6 billion. So theoretically, serial NOR will take a larger share of the total and that may irritate Macronix's competitors, Numonyx, Winbond, Atmel and Spansion. In that order, with Macronix on top.

However, put against the back drop of a total NOR and NAND memory market of $20.4 billion, rising to $38.2 billion by 2013, and serial NOR becomes a small opportunity for the likes of Spansion, Samsung and Numonyx to worry too much about.

If they do worry about it, there's no real barrier to entry. Macronix itself admits that any of the top-tier companies could do a 256-Mbit flash next week, if they liked. All that's been lacking, according to Niebel is a standard interface they can all operate from. Will Macronix's new 32-bit scheme be that new interface? I don't know. Do you? What do you think of it?

Take a closer look at how the 32-bit addressing scheme works here and view the MX25L25635E's full datasheet here to get an idea of how Macronix has implemented it.

I can't myself recall the last time a field of highly competitive companies rallied around an interface standard introduced by one of their own without a lot of jostling and bloodshed first.

The third question is whether there's a market pull for a 256-Mbit serial NOR flash. Macronix is confident that set-top boxes, low-cost handsets, WiMAX, networking and servers will demand the extra capacity, along with the usual space savings and signal integrity a serial NOR provides over its parallel brethren. However, at a 1.8x cost increase, according to Macronix, for a same-size-package device over a 128-Mbit device, there isn't really much of a cost savings, though Niebel says this price will surely drop.

So, for double the price, you get double the memory in a market where cost is everything and any cost increase must be justified. If you can get your code into 128 Mbits, you're obliged to stick with it. That handicaps 256-Mbits from the start.

The question then becomes whether or not there'll be a burgeoning need to go beyond 128 Mbit for application code storage for typically low-end embedded systems. There may well be, and not only for the applications Macronix outlined.

As we imbue all embedded devices with some level of connectivity, the applications that have to run on these once-isolated systems may now gravitate beyond those required for single-purpose closed-loop systems. Instead, they may be weighed down with communications stacks, information gathering, collaborative system-type functions, and image and audio processing (yes, even big-brother-type features, if we let it happen).The silicon and sensors needed to add this functionality will amount to pennies in the near future, the application software on top is what will truly explode.

We'll be exploring the how-to and the implications of this ubiquitous embedded connectivity at the up-coming EETimes Virtual Conference: Connected Devices, where yours truly will be hosting a panel on processor choices and connectivity implementation.

In the meantime, I'm curious to know your thoughts on the implications, if any, of Macronix's 256-Mbit laucnh, the interface it's pushing and the potential for embedded connectivity to change the landscape completely.

Survivor: Core Edition

Thanks to a licensing deal with STMicroelectronics reported today, ARM is headed into set-top boxes, the home turf of the MIPS Technologies core. This is just the latest move in a cross-market processor mania.

Continue reading "Survivor: Core Edition"

Web going global finally

Reports are out that English may have to share with other languages in Web addresses, giving way for urls to appear in simplified Chinese characters, Russian Cyrillic, Korean Hangul and Hebrew, among others.

Continue reading "Web going global finally"

Smart grid $ flow

The Department of Energy is expected to give away tomorrow all its $3.4 billion in economic stimulus funds earmarked for smart grid projects. More than 400 groups will be waiting to see if their proposals got picked.

Continue reading "Smart grid $ flow"

Wind River promises neutrality

I just came across an interesting blog written by Ken Klein, president of Wind River. The past few months have been quite interesting from my perch, covering the happenings at Wind River. But it's seems to be more speculation than anything. The conversations that I have with Wind River's competitors always seem to start with "How can we divide up Wind's share of the market?"

At some point, Wind River has to stop supporting all non-Intel architectures. As much as they say it's not true, I find it hard to believe. But for now, I'll take them at their word. We'll see what happens over time. It's not the first time that a processor maker has acquired an operating system vendor, and I'm hard pressed to come up with one that stayed independent.

In any event, read Klein's blog, then let me know what you think. Continue reading "Wind River promises neutrality"

iPhones slow, iPods fall

Steve Jobs might want to change the name of his company back to Apple Computer Inc. after the latest quarterly financial results reported today.

Continue reading "iPhones slow, iPods fall"

Direct routing

The Wi-Fi Alliance is finishing a 'Wi-Fi Direct' specification that will allow users to to communicate among devices with others without the need to route the data thru a wireless operator.

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IMEC puts 10-nm interconnects in true perspective

At last week's tech fest at the IMEC research facility in Belgium, we were given an update on the technologies, processes and design techniques that will get us to 10-nm interconnects. But one slide hits hard and shows just what 10 nm really means.

Continue reading "IMEC puts 10-nm interconnects in true perspective"

War and Peace

The Nobel prize for peace awarded to president Obama is a sign of the times and in spirit of Alfred Nobel's wishes.

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ESC UK sure had its moments, led by a lively debate around Linux

There was a ton of great content at ESC UK in Farnborough. Some of the highlights includes a pair of panels (both moderated by yours truly) and a Build Your Own Embedded System track, similar to what's offered at ESCs in the US. Like the Boston ESC, attendees received an Atom-based kit running Windows Embedded.

The two panels covered the Current State of Microelectronics and the Current State of Embedded. Both were mostly driven by questions from a standing-room-only crowd.

The Microelectronics panel consisted of reps from NXP, Freescale, ST, and Imagination Technologies. The questions ranged from, "what is an embedded system," to" who will win between Intel and ARM." (See video of Tony King-Smith, VP of Marketing for Imagination Technologies.) You could imagine what the responses were. (Note: Patrick Mannion offers his opinion on Intel vs. ARM on EETimes.com.) Some of those answers were caught on video, while others were audio-recorded. When I figure out how to post the audio and video, I'll do so. You'll get a kick out of the "what is an embedded system" question. I assure you, it's not the answer you'd give to your mom.

The State of Embedded panel featured three of the biggest stars and most widely recognized experts in the embedded arena—Jack Ganssle, Dan Saks, and Niall Cooling. They were asked questions like what programming language will be most popular five years from now; what advice can you give a student looking to get into the embedded space; and why doesn't anyone care about Java.

The most interesting discussion arose when the subject of Linux came up. Ganssle offered a response that certainly raised a few eyebrows. His declaration that "Linux sucks!" began a whole debate on whether Linux really has a place in the embedded market.

One man's opinion (mine) is that it definitely has a place, but it's not the be all, end all. For the right application, it's quite useful. Just don't have it run the plane that I'm riding or running the servers at my bank. Continue reading "ESC UK sure had its moments, led by a lively debate around Linux"