Electronic Products - January 2019

I

f you are designing nodes for the fron-

tier of the IoT, the good news is that

there are plenty of silicon outfitters.

The challenge is figuring out what you

need and mapping that to the growing

landscape of suppliers.

The following list of 10 processors in-

cludes — in no particular order — some

of the most interesting recent options

that point to major trends in IoT silicon.

You may not find an exact fit for your

deployment, but hopefully, the list will

guide you along some useful pathways.

1. MediaTek MT3620
   Microsoft worked with MediaTek to
   make this processor the reference chip
   for Azure Sphere, its all-in-one node-to-
   cloud IoT offering announced in April.
   It’s part of a wave of integrated solutions
   emerging from cloud providers including
   Alibaba and Amazon.
   Microsoft distinguished its approach
   by defining a so-called Pluton security
   block, implemented in the MT3260 on
   an Arm Cortex-M4F core that han-
   dles security operations. The part also
   includes a 500-MHz Cortex-A7 apps
   processor with 4-MB SRAM, a Wi-Fi
   subsystem, and support for 16-MB exter-
   nal flash.
   The architecture is “absurdly
   heavy” in memory and power con-
   sumption, especially given that users
   can access only 256 KB of the on-
   board SRAM, said Hugo Fiennes, CEO
   and co-founder of Electric Imp. The
   IoT module and service vendor was
   among the first to deliver hardware
   for end nodes with connectivity and
   security built in, and now the cloud
   giants are catching up.
   Cloud giants also hope that the inte-
   grated hardware attracts more customers
   for their massive data centers. That’s, in

10 cool processors for the IoT

Ten options worth consideration when designing an end-node device

BY RICK MERRITT

Silicon Valley Bureau Chief, EE Times

http://www.eetimes.com

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24 PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT 10 Hot Processors for IoT

JANUARY 2019 • electronicproducts.com • ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS