Transcript
Page 1: Appsterdam talk - about the chips inside your phone

chips: the engine beneath your apps

[email protected]

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Phone

•  Software •  Electronics •  Mechanics

Nexus 5

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21 January 2014 6

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Fabs

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21 January 2014 8

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ASML 21 January 2014 9

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Industry drivers

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Moore’s law

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

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Moore’s law

2013 4x 2.3GHz CPU

2GB RAM 16GB Storage

1996 16x 200MHz CPUs

2GB RAM 2GB Storage

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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'

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Why phone drives the CE industry - volume

1.8B per year

every 5 mins truck

9x around earth

everyone wants to differentiate ! innovation

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Why phone drives the CE industry - loans

Loan-based sales caused huge influx of $$$

Banks:

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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

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Which one is more powerful?

€99 $5,349.00

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Let’s go inside

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iPhone 5s Teardowns:

www.ifixit.com www.techinsights.com

www.chipworks.com

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Memory

apps processor

Wireless

Wired

Audio IO

Touch

IMU

Display / Camera

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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

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Memory

Apps processor

Wireless

Wired

Audio IO

Touch

IMU

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

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Memory

Apps processor

Wireless

Wired

Audio IO

Touch

IMU

Display / Camera

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Memory

Apps processor

Wireless

Wired

Audio IO

Touch

IMU

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

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Apple’s A7

Total: 102mm2

Dual CPU: 17mm2

3.6Mgates each

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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'

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Software design

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

compiler source code executable

instruction set register files

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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

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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'

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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

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Future

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Exciting things: depth cameras

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

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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

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Exciting things: minidrones

Companion to your phone Examples: navigation, wedding pictures

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Thank you!

[email protected] @marcocjacobs


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