Date: 27/08/2012

FTF 2012: More software, more SoC and more colorful

The popular Freescale Technology Forum (FTF) India 2012 held on Aug 23 and 24 at Bangalore was more lively and colorful than the 2011 event. The event was buzzing with tech-talks at sessions, display booths and keynote speeches. This well appreciated event is gaining popularity compared to other semiconductor events in India.

The attendees of FTF 2012 are interested in software-for-the-silicon rather than the silicon itself, because India and in specific Bangalore boasts large-base of embedded software development companies and education community. Questions like: what if my processor core is different, what if I run this protocol stack instead of that protocol, Is the code/OS portable, do you provide x-software and stack with the silicon and more question like these on silicon and software were asked.

In fact the diamond sponsors of the this year's FTF event were all system software vendors. The diamond sponsors were Enea, Mentor Graphics, QNX, and Wind River. The trend of growing software was well witnessed but the hardware remains critical. The hardware advances such as MEMS sensors, highly integrated SoCs were highlights at the show.

With the focus on Freescale's core strengths of embedded processors, networking processors, microcontrollers and DSPs, the application highlighted by multiple speakers was Internet of Things, connecting billions of devices (estimated to be 50 billion by 2020) ; connecting anything which human being need. Medical, Automotive, industrial, consumer all now are getting connected. Freescale want to a play role in every embedded and networking segment.

The other specific highlights in the speeches by various speakers include:

Silicon for scalable wireless telecom infrastructure (pico, femto and macro cell with the same silicon) for routing, switching, and streaming high definition video and audio.
Cyber-securing the embedded devices and networks.
The Moore's Law stuff of low power and miniaturization still a hot trend.
In automotive: the connectivity, driver safety, infotainment, sensors and monitoring ICs were important part of the event.
Leveraging of cloud computing for various communication and enterprise applications.
Microcontrollers for nearly every application, with one of the industry's widest offering.

If we go little deep in the Freescale's new-product announcements, it can be easily found, Freescale has sharply focused on embedded computing in selected applications such automotive, networking, medical and industrial. The eye is clearly on volume market i.e. anything in millions. The SoC for growing volume market is the target of Freescale. In that sense, India is important for its size. It can be 16-bit MCU integrated with all the necessary silicon in one chip or multiple-core DSP powered processor for a networking equipment. MEMS sensor is another important area for Freescale for long time.

Though Freescale not disclosing its exact sales revenue from India, its estimated to be growing at 20% with revenues around 200 Million US$. Freescale has strong hold in ICs for automotive instrument cluster. In earlier FTF events, Freescale predicted huge success for handheld consumer devices and was expecting large sales of its i.MX 6 family ICs used in tablet and such handheld devices. However in consumer market there is no great going for Freescale. At this year's FTF, consumer market was not highlighted.

In industrial segment Freescale is pinning hope on smart-grid. Freescale has better technology than others in this domain. Smart grid can become second best market for Freescale after automotive.