The Customization Landscape for Embedded Systems

The explosive growth of embedded systems in existing and emerging application domains is accompanied by unique constraints and performance requirements along multiple dimensions such as speed, power, and real-time behavior. Typically, these requirements are encapsulated in a few important components, or kernels, for example, for audio and video encoding/decoding, data compression, and encryption. Software implementations of these kernels executing on embedded microprocessors are inadequate to meet the requirements. Customization plays a central role in meeting these unique and specialized needs and has historically been realized by the development of custom hardware solutions such as fully custom application specific integrated circuits (ASICs).However, each new generation of semiconductor technology is increasing the non- recurring engineering (NRE) costs associated with ASIC development and thereby making it feasible for only high volume applications and those with product lifetimes amenable to a long time to market design cycle. The increasing pervasiveness of embedded systems encompasses applications with smaller product lifetimes, shorter development cycles, and increasing cost containment pressures. Sustaining the continued growth demanded by the market will require technology to deliver performance characteristics of custom solutions while overcoming the twin hurdles of high NRE costs and long time to market of current ASIC solutions. Further, the embedded market is comprised of application segments covering a range of costs, volumes, and time to market needs. For example, components of 3G phones, set top boxes, color laser printers, color copiers, and network attached storage devices span a range of prices from on the order of a few hundred to a few thousand dollars and a range of volumes ranging from thousands to tens of millions of units. Consequently the approaches to customization are diverse.As new products and services are envisioned, these evolving workload requirements will place more pressure on the need to innovate in overcoming the high NRE costs and time to market considerations of custom hardware solutions. The challenge for future embedded systems is to reconcile the demands of hardware customization, cost, and time to market constraints. This talk presents the emerging landscape of solutions, identifies key trends, and describes some representative approaches.