Last week at CES, Intel announced their new CPU family aimed at High End Personal Computers. Normally this would only be tangentially interesting to us. However, this news was right up our alley because Intel announced a System-in-Package (SiP) device geared toward the consumer PC industry. The new 8th generation Core Processors with Radeon RX Vega M Graphics combines the Intel Core CPU with a GPU from AMD and High Speed HBM2 Graphics memory all into a single package. (Read More…)
Applications requiring machine vision and the ability to make decisions without human interference are becoming more widespread. The OSD335x System-in-Package is a perfect starting point for these types of applications. Its Texas Instruments ARM Cortex-A8 processor has the power and the peripherals required for them. The below block diagram illustrates how the OSD335x would fit into a generalized industrial control system.
Today’s embedded designers face more challenges in terms of design complexity, cycle time and target size. System-In-Package (SiP) devices, such as the OSD335x Family, bring many advantages when designing and building an embedded system.
One significant advantage of using a SiP device is the amount of printed circuit board (PCB) space that can be saved versus using hundreds of discrete components. To understand this advantage, let us examine the amount of space required by the OSD335x devices and the discrete components that make up an equivalent system. (Read More…)
One of the key benefits delivered by System-In-Package (SiP) technology is the savings realized in the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Assembly process. This is a benefit that is commonly overlooked by designers on the front end. Typically, they only look at the cost of the individual components on the Bill of Material (BOM) and don’t consider the cost of assembly. With System-In-Package technology, the number of components that need be placed during the assembly process can be significantly reduced. This reduction decreases the component set up time and actual time spent on the Pick and Place machine. Simultaneously driving down the assembly cost and the total cost of the finished product. (Read More…)
System on a chip (SoC) technology has got us a long way, allowing for entire electronic systems to be integrated into a single microchip, and SoC technology has long been the driving force behind smaller and smaller electronic systems with higher and higher levels of performance. Like all great technologies, though, SoC technology must eventually give way to something even more innovative and effective. In an article published by Stephan Ohr on EE Times, Ohr discusses how the increasing costs of transistor scaling has made SoC technology less viable and has created a demand for a specialized design process, and we at Octavo Systems completely agree with that assessment. With current manufacturing trends demanding an efficient process to manufacture an entire electronic system at one time and at increasingly smaller sizes, SoC technology is no longer an optimal solution. Fortunately, we have a replacement–System in Package (SiP) technology. (Read More…)
Our CTO, Gene Frantz, published an article on Embedded Computing last week titled System-In-Package: The Next Step of Integration. In his article, he poses an interesting question: How do small, innovative companies work with larger semiconductor manufacturers to further integrate their designs? He outlined four questions that need to be answered “YES” before a large S/C manufacturer will agree to work with any company for a custom integration.
What happens, however, if you can’t answer “YES” to all of them? Are you out of luck? Is there no path to further integration? Not quite. Gene points out that there just might be a way forward with the advances made by Octavo. (Read More…)
Today is a very exciting day at Octavo Systems. We’re officially launching our first product, the OSD3358-512M. The OSD3358 is a System-In-Package (SiP) device that integrates the Texas Instruments (TI) Sitara™ AM3358 Arm® Cortex®-A8 processor, the TI TPS65217C PMIC, the TI TL5209 LDO, a 512MB DDR3, and over 140 Passives into a single easy to use BGA package. The OSD3358 gives designers of all levels access to unprecedented integration and to ease of use. (Read More…)
Octavo Systems Helps Bridge the Prototype-to-Production Gap
Austin, Texas (May 9, 2016) – Octavo Systems LLC (Octavo) today launched a new platform that makes it easier than ever for designers to quickly create production-ready systems based on the Texas Instruments (TI) Sitara™ AM335x processor with an ARM® Cortex®-A8 core. The OSD3358, the first in a family of System-In-Package (SiP) devices, is geared to help developers who are using the BeagleBone® Black single board computing (SBC) platform move from prototype to production effortlessly. (Read More…)
In the landmark paper of 1965, Gordon Moore[1] made an observation stating that with cost of manufacturing per device falling, it becomes economical to pack more and more devices in an IC chip. In his paper, Moore projected the number of devices in an IC chip would double every one to two years. This observation soon took the form of a proxy for future growth estimates in the semiconductor industry.
For decades, Moore’s law has been the benchmark for semiconductor technology development, eventually becoming a roadmap and a self-fulfilling prophecy for IC development. Figure 1[2] shows the growth of the number of devices in a semiconductor chip over time and tracks well with Moore’s projection. (Read More…)
Moore’s Law has served us well for over a half of a century. It drove the semiconductor (SC) process technology roadmap. It got us to think about putting more transistors on an integrated circuit to the point where it is no longer a nightmare to consider billions of transistors on one piece of silicon. In fact, several years ago I began to use the phrase “transistors are becoming a buck a billion” to put a new perspective on the success of Moore’s Law.
But even with the great success the SC industry has had, we continue to find ourselves unable to accomplish the ultimate goal, a complete system on a chip. Yes, we talk about System on Chip (SoC) technology as the solution (now what was the problem again?). However, the advancements in IC technology have actually defeated the primary goal of SoC, the integration of a complete system on a single piece of silicon. In the past I have actually suggested that it should be SSoC rather than SoC as all we have been able to do is a Sub-System on a Chip. (Read More…)
