appsterdam talk - about the chips inside your phone
DESCRIPTION
In this talk we'll focus on the hardware inside the phone: the chips that enable the mobile user experience. I'll give an overview of the semiconductor industry, show typical phone chip architectures, their trends and how they influence the mobile experience. Here and there during the presentation, we'll take a quick peek into the future of the mobile phone.TRANSCRIPT
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
