Mobile processors, also known as application processors, are well-known as the engines that run smartphones, tablet computers, and other wireless devices. But these chips increasingly are finding their way into autonomous vehicles, the Internet of Things, unmanned aerial vehicles, virtual reality, and other applications far beyond phone calls and text messages. Moreover, they are gaining in complexity as they are adapted for other markets.

This shift was evident at this month’s Consumer Electronics Show. Little attention was paid to smartphones and their apps, even though this is still one of the largest markets for complex SoCs. The real buzz was artificial intelligence, big data, machine learning, and self-driving cars.

As the market for smartphones and tablets flatten, processor vendors and their many suppliers in design software and services are branching out. The industry transition to 10nm chips, as exemplified by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 835 processor, is pointing to a future with more sophisticated components to deal with images, 4K videos, and voice commands, in addition to processing data.

Strategy Analytics estimates that Qualcomm commanded 39% of the global smartphone AP market during the first six months of 2016. MediaTek held second place, with 23%, and Apple took third, with 15% market share. The smartphone AP market reached sales of $10 billion in the first half of last year, a 3% gain from the same period in 2015, according to the market research firm.

“Qualcomm maintained its smartphone AP market share leadership despite MediaTek’s strong inroads in 1H 2016,” said Strategy Analytics’ Sravan Kundojjala in a statement. “After a less successful 2015, Qualcomm continued to recover its flagship market share with the newly launched Snapdragon 820, which featured in several flagships, including the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, LG G5, Xiaomi Mi 5, OnePlus 3 and others. Qualcomm’s mid-range Snapdragon 652, 650 and 400 series of chips also gained good traction during 1H 2016 and helped Qualcomm to maintain volume.”

That won’t be enough to sustain the kind of growth rates that companies like Qualcomm and Samsung have seen in the past, though, which explains why they are both getting into connected cars in big ways. Qualcomm’s proposed acquisition of NXP Semiconductors and Samsung’s purchase of Harman International Industries are evidence of this new way of thinking. This analysis, and this one, detail how Qualcomm and Samsung are diversifying their chip efforts into cars, drones, and other products.

NXP brought its new i.MX M8 Series application processors for IoT devices to CES, unveiling four models for audio, vision, and voice processing. Each IC has up to four 1.5-gigahertz ARM Cortex-A53 and ARM Cortex-M4F cores, along with full 4K UltraHD resolution and HDR video quality, and up to 20 audio channels and DSD512 audio.

Steve Roddy, senior group director, Tensilica marketing, at Cadence Design Systems, sees “an explosion of heterogeneous processing elements” in mobile processors, as “the number and complexity of digital signal processors really take off.” Mobile processors now are “always on, always listening,” he observes.

The Google Translate service currently runs on convolutional neural networks, Roddy notes. The upgrading of the language translation service now depends upon “how many compute islands are available,” he says. This kind of data processing is “more than megahertz,” he comments.

While processors are getting brawnier, their power efficiency is advancing by 20x, according to the Cadence executive. “We still need general-purpose CPUs,” he adds. At the same time, specialization for processors is requiring “more and more complex use cases,” Roddy says.

Today’s mobile processors are doing a lot more than taking selfies, though. Application processor companies are building on their research and development investments for handsets by “repurposing chipset devices” for other applications, notably automotive/infotainment electronics, drones, IoT, and security cameras, Roddy says.

By: DocMemory
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