cycle, according to a report from Bob
Wheeler of the Linley Group. It is also
among the first crop of SoCs to pack a
300-MHz Cortex-M33, Arm’s new core
with built-in hardware security. In addi-
tion, it is in the first wave of chips taking
advantage of fully depleted silicon-on-in-
sulator process technology.
The high-end focus means that
the part will likely require a high-end
battery. The RT600 could consume 30×
the power of ETA’s Tensai, and it lacks
embedded flash, noted Wheeler.- Renesas Electronics RZ/A2M
For imaging apps, Renesas previewed
in September a unique part. The RZ/
A2M combines a proprietary accelerator
to process image data with a 528-MHz
Arm Cortex-A9 and 4-MB SRAM for
machine-vision jobs.
Renesas designed a dynamically
reconfigurable processor (DRP) made up
of multiple cores that can exploit the par-
allelism in imaging algorithms. It expects
that the DRP, described as similar to a
GPU, will handle a wide variety of jobs,
initially around inference tasks. Future
products will target neural-net training
at the edge.
As with all parallel processors,
programming can be the big bugaboo.
Renesas said that its DRP can be pro-
grammed in C using compilers and tools
that it provides.- Ambiq Apollo3 Blue
Ambiq Micro was one of the first start-
ups to pioneer sub-threshold process-
ing in the MCU space, driving some
operations down to 0.5 V to save power.
Its latest device, the Apollo3 Blue, pushes
power consumption down to 6 μA/MHz,
and it snagged a design win in the Hua-
wei Honor Band 4 fitness tracker.
The device is now in production, but
at press time, the company had not yet
posted a datasheet. It packs a BLE 5 radio
along with 1 MB of flash and 384-KB
SRAM in packages as small as 3.3 ×
3.2 mm. Ambiq has demoed the part
running neural-net inference jobs using
models from Sensory for users interested
in building it into an always-listening
voice assistant. - STMicroelectronics STM32H7
If security is a top priority for your
design, Fiennes of Electric Imp recom-
mends the STM32H7. “It supports ECC
on all memories, and that’s unusual
for an MCU,” he said. “In general, the
STM32s have good security. We talk to
the company about security improve-
ments for the next generation and they
listen.”
The SoC can drive an Arm Cor-
tex-M7 to 2020 CoreMark and 856
DMIPS at 400 MHz. It includes up to
2-MB flash, 1 MB of SRAM, a TFT-LCD
controller, a JPEG codec, and support for
double-precision floating-point work.- Quectel BG96
One option well worth considering is
buying an integrated module so that
someone else can do the heavy lifting.
Module makers such as Murata are
experts at packing components together
with minimal device spacing.
These days, you can get a module for
whatever wireless network that you plan
to use. Cellular modules are the most
widely used because the vendor typically
takes care of making sure that the devices
pass time-consuming regulatory and
even carrier certifications.
Fiennes recommends the BG96
module from Quectel Wireless Commu-
nications, in part because it supports not
only the latest LTE CatM and NB-IoT
standards but 2G as well, a good fallback
for some global markets. It also supports
GPS, comes in a compact 26.5 × 22.5
× 2.3-mm package, and hits prices well
below $15 in high volumes.
The Quectel module uses a Qualcomm
MDM9206 chip, but Fiennes noted that
devices using an Altair cellular modem
tend to consume less power. There are
plenty of other choices from module ven-
dors including Sierra Wireless, Gemalto,
Telit, SIMCom, and u-blox, among others,
some using cellular modem chips from
Sequans and Samsung. - Roll your own
In these days when the IoT and ma-
chine learning are still young, you may
be able to differentiate yourself with a
homemade SoC if you have the time and
money. This is an especially good option
if you have an eye on a unique emerging
application or your own bit of custom
in-house IP.
There’s a smorgasbord of CPU, GPU,
DSP, and accelerator cores available
from companies such as Arm, Andes,
Cadence, Ceva, Cortus, Synopsys, and
VeriSilicon. Some of the vendors even
have their own design service operations
that would be happy to build an SoC to
your spec. ☐
26 PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT 10 Hot Processors for IoT
JANUARY 2019 • electronicproducts.com • ELECTRONIC PRODUCTS
The Apollo3 Blue includes an embedded Bluetooth 5 controller and temperature sensor.IMAGE: AMBIQ MICRO