appsterdam talk - about the chips inside your phone

chips: the engine beneath your apps

marco@marcojacobs.nl

Phone

•  Software •  Electronics •  Mechanics

Nexus 5

21 January 2014 6

Fabs

21 January 2014 8

ASML 21 January 2014 9

Industry drivers

Moore’s law

“The number of transistors per chip doubles approximately every 1.5 years”

Moore’s law

2013 4x 2.3GHz CPU

2GB RAM 16GB Storage

1996 16x 200MHz CPUs

2GB RAM 2GB Storage

The semiconductor value chain

Processor'IP'

Consumers'Chips' Systems'

license fee+ royalties (e.g. 1% ASP)

Fabs'

IP yellow pages: www.design-reuse.com

Apps'

Why phone drives the CE industry - volume

1.8B per year

every 5 mins truck

9x around earth

everyone wants to differentiate ! innovation

Why phone drives the CE industry - loans

Loan-based sales caused huge influx of $$$

Banks:

Mobile phone drives the CE industry

mobile phone architecture and ecosystem has become extremely complex, innovative and efficient

! it is displacing lots of ICs in other markets

Which one is more powerful?

€99 $5,349.00

Let’s go inside

iPhone 5s Teardowns:

www.ifixit.com www.techinsights.com

www.chipworks.com

Memory

apps processor

Wireless

Wired

Audio IO

Touch

IMU

Display / Camera

Three kinds of chips

•  Digital "   Logic "   SRAM (fastest memory, expensive)

•  Memory "   DRAM (cheap, fast, but loses data

without power) "   Flash (cheap, slower, doesn’t loose

data without power) •  Analog / Mixed Signal "   Radio waves + "   Sensors, audio, etc.

Where your

software runs

How it interacts with real

world

Typically built in different factories

Memory

Apps processor

Wireless

Wired

Audio IO

Touch

IMU

Display / Camera All digital chips get “sucked into the apps processor”

Memory

Apps processor

Wireless

Wired

Audio IO

Touch

IMU

Display / Camera

Memory

Apps processor

Wireless

Wired

Audio IO

Touch

IMU

Display / Camera Intel at this moment plays no big role in mobile

Apple’s A7

Total: 102mm2

Dual CPU: 17mm2

3.6Mgates each

Texas Instruments OMAP5 Page 291, http://www.ti.com/lit/ug/swpu249y/swpu249y.pdf

Dual'core'A15'+'NEON'

audio' DSP'HD'

video'+'ARM9'

Face'detect'

Display'

Imaging''(+2'ARMs)'

Imaging'

2D'

GPU'

USB' Flash'

DRAM'

boLleneck'

Software design

/* Hello World */ #include<stdio.h> main() { printf("Hello World"); }

compiler source code executable

instruction set register files

Hardware design (for logic) module up_counter ( out , enable , counter , clk , reset ); output [7:0] out; input enable, clk, reset; reg [7:0] out; always @(posedge clk) if (reset) begin out <= 8'b0 ; end else if (enable) begin out <= out + 1; end endmodule

synthesis place & route

source code GDS II

std cell library + memories

+ MHz target

Quite similar to software design

Processors and logic: horses for courses

CPU' GPU' DSP' hardwired'

Small''10kgate,100MHz'

Big'>1Mgate,'2GHz+'

comms'

video'

audio'

voice'generic processing (OS, web browser,

database, etc)

2D / 3D UI / Gaming

became generic and so powerful, use it for generic

compute

modems camera, audio display, video

apps programmers only exposed through APIs

CPUs'10S100kgate,100S500MHz'

Moore’s law: 2x transistors every 18 months ! side effects

•  Heterogeneous architectures "   Different processors each with their own specialization "   Exposed with APIs (e.g. OpenCL, Renderscript, app specific, etc)

•  ARM’s big.LITTLE "   Automatic code migration between multiple processors with

same instruction set, different power envelopes "   Like a hybrid car: two engines, one optimized for maximum

horsepower, one optimized for power efficiency "   Programmer doesn’t notice

•  Dark Silicon "   Transistors up 2x, power only goes down by √2 "   Silicon real-estate is cheap, but power becomes issue "   Not everything can be on at the same time ! dark silicon

Future

Exciting things: depth cameras

Sees depth and can measure volume Examples: cooking, weighing yourself

Exciting things: gestures interfaces

Gestures go from 2D (touch) to 3D Examples: angry birds, layered keyboard

Think “Iron Man’s user interface”,

without the holographic

display

Exciting things: minidrones

Companion to your phone Examples: navigation, wedding pictures

Thank you!

marco@marcojacobs.nl @marcocjacobs