Why can't the next outlet of MCU be missed?

Time：2018-10-25

According to the micro-network report, the wireless technology that once "well water does not make river water" began to be a "core". Take the division of IoT wireless technology as an example. Although the various wireless interconnection technologies in the IoT world compete with each other, they are all in one, but today, in the fragmented IoT market, "one is all-in-one" is An unfinished task, "coexistence" becomes a viable option. Such "cooperation" has already begun to take shape. More and more manufacturers are launching single-chip MCUs that support multi-protocol RF such as BLE + IEEE802.15.4. Will this be the next step for MCUs?

As the basic components and heart of general-purpose electronic products, the importance of MCU is self-evident, the market The scale is also rising. According to the IC Insights research report, the global MCU market will reach its peak in 2020, with sales of 20.9 billion US dollars and shipments of 26.7 billion. The Chinese market, which occupies the C position, bears its weight. According to the IHS research report, the Chinese market will reach 5 billion U.S. dollars in 2018 and 6.42 billion U.S. dollars in 2021.
In the MCU market where the market structure is relatively stable, foreign giants ST, Renesas, NXP, TI, etc. have been holding the head position, and domestic manufacturers are still accelerating the penetration from the low end to the middle and high end. It is worth noting that the MCU is moving forward on the road of technology upgrade, but what is important is how to be consistent?
Emerging applications such as Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, AI, and intelligent driving have put forward some new requirements for MCU, including processing capability improvement, data acquisition speed and accuracy, communication protocol interface, reliability and stability, etc., which require high performance. Low power consumption, high reliability, large capacity Flash and RAM, support for a variety of network interfaces, wireless technology and OTA air upgrades, to achieve strict functional security and network security. These new technologies will lead the technology upgrade of the new generation of MCUs. "With the maturity of wireless technology, wireless functions as a standard peripheral of the MCU will come sooner or later." Tang Xiaoquan, an industry expert who has been doing MCU research, concluded.
In this process, the competition between the old and new forces will gradually differentiate. The competitive field of the traditional MCU market is primarily hardware-centric, including power consumption, peripherals, performance, volume and material costs, etc., and in the future foreseeable greater system-level differentiation, providing a comprehensive solution around the chip or will generate The new change.
As more and more devices access the IoT, more than just wireless connectivity is required. And higher security, but also low cost, low power consumption, etc., so the previous MCU + wireless chip discrete solution appeared a "crisis", integration is a tacit choice. As seen in the market, NXP's K32W0x, TI's SimpleLink dual-core architecture CC2650, ST's STM32WB multi-protocol chip, and Nordic's nRF52840 are all available, and wireless MCUs have become a reality.
Admittedly, this integration brings new challenges, such as how to configure the hardware resources of the chip and support the operation of different protocols; how to maintain the low power consumption characteristics under the premise of increasing the complexity of the chip; how to provide multi-protocol applications Reliable, easy-to-use development tools, and more. Hakim Jaafar, STM32 ultra-low-power and network microcontroller marketing manager, pointed out that the debugging of the wireless protocol stack, ecosystem construction and competitiveness are challenges.
But the advantages of such a multi-protocol, single-chip MCU are still obvious. Hakim Jaafar analyzed that the previous solution was a single-core MCU+ wireless chip, which was not only costly, but also required to run both the application and the wireless protocol. Therefore, it required a time-sharing system and was more complicated. At the same time, the task processing time is long, so the power consumption is higher. From the perspective of the integrated architecture, the general wireless MCU is configured with ARM Cortex-M4 and Cortex-M0+, M0+ is responsible for the wireless protocol stack and security key, and the application runs on M4, which helps in real-time, Security gains an advantage, and power consumption is optimized by letting M4 sleep while M0+ is working.
At the same time, this brings convenience to developers, such as the use of dual protocol chips supporting BLE and Thread in popular smart door locks, which can support direct unlocking of mobile phones with BLE, or as a smart home Thread network node. The cloud controls and manages.
Although there have been MCUs integrated with related wireless RF in the past, Hakim Jaafar mentioned that STM32WB can support the latest protocol stack for Bluetooth 5.0 and has the function of mesh. In the past, Bluetooth IP did not support 5.0. With the latest IP, it became may.
Most mainstream wireless MCUs integrate an open 2.4G RF multi-protocol module that supports Bluetooth 5.0 and Thread and ZigBee protocol stacks. Perhaps the question now is how to stand out in a homogenous wireless MCU?
"The wireless function will become the standard peripheral of the MCU. At this time, the competition of the MCU will return to the original state, that is, the cost performance, service support, especially the support of the software." Tang Xiaoquan bluntly.
For the value of the STM32WB series, Cao Jindong, director of the market and application of ST China Microcontroller Division, is a few Jane Jane. One is ultra-low power consumption, which can reach 1.8μA under 256K RAM and less than 50nA in shutdown mode. It is ultra-safe, providing a lot of protection and safety performance; the third is the system cost, STM32WB integrates the balun, etc., the external device only needs at least 6 and at least two layers can be achieved, which greatly reduces the cost; Continuing or sharing the existing ecosystem of STM32, with free software and IDE integrated development environment, can lower the development threshold and speed up the development process; Fifth, ST can provide up to 10 years of supply guarantee.
The importance of security for IoT is self-evident. Cao Jindong said that STM32WB mainly guarantees security through dual core, M0+ stores security key. This area cannot be accessed by M4 kernel. Through this mechanism, when the program receives the code through OTA upgrade, it needs M0+ to confirm whether the password of the program is The original passwords match and if they do not match, the upgrade is stopped. In addition, in the IoT protection, there are a series of defense measures against non-intrusive attacks and software attacks.
In addition to the "soft and hard indicators" competition in the MCU, it is also necessary to consider the "degree" of the operating system and cloud connection. Cao Jindong mentioned that STM32WB supports mainstream IoT operating systems such as AliOS, RT-Thread and LiteOS, while cloud vendor partners include Amazon, Microsoft, and Ali, as well as some small and medium-sized cloud vendors.
Obviously, wireless MCUs have become the focus of manufacturers. Moreover, major manufacturers are based on a platform-based architecture, such as ST's STM32, TI's SimpleLink, Nordic's nRF5, NXP's Kinetis W, etc., to follow the previous ecological advantages. In the future, with the development of the market, major manufacturers will continue to introduce new features of wireless MCUs to meet the needs of market segments.
"Next ST will also introduce the WL series, that is, long range wireless, such as Sub-GHz, and even SoC with WiFi, these are ST's plans for the future." Hakim Jaafar pointed out.
At the same time, we must also see that behind the multi-protocolization of wireless MCU chips, there is actually a deeper motivation, that is, the IP of wireless technology - WiFi itself has IP capabilities, BLE 4.2 version adds to the IP network Support, and 802.15.4-based Thread is also an IP-based network protocol - how such "common" will promote the trend of Internet of Things wireless interconnection technology, deserves industry attention. Tr And the rise of wireless MCU, does it mean the elimination of the discrete Bluetooth or ZigBee market in the future? Hakim Jaafar's view is that technically speaking, the demand for these two technologies is different, and the needs of customers are diversified, especially the IoT market is particularly fragmented, and some may require relatively small resources, only some transparent. RF; some may require powerful resources, and external devices such as MCUs or MPUs. "Traditional radio frequency chips will still exist, and integration is also a big trend. The two architecture chips complement each other, the key is to look at the market demand." Hakim Jaafar mentioned.