Creating better open ARM hardware
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Agenda
 The new mbed mission
 Industry collaboration
 Creating better open ARM hardware
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ARM in classic embedded
Relative growth in MCU & smartcard
1.9 billion
ARM Cortex-M devices shipped in 2012
by leading semiconductor companies
MCUs
radios
sensors
32-bit intelligence starting at $0.32
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mbed Objective
IoT!
Make the creation of billions of connected devices possible
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Why IoT is interesting to mbed!
“By 2018, 50% of IoT
solutions will be from
start-ups less than 3
years old” - Gartner
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Enabling key IoT technologies in mbed!
Internet
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Web 2.0 and Smartphone Industries
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What Enabled the Mobile Computing Revolution?
Smart, low-power, connected devices
Standards based internet capabilities
Cortex-A
Cortex-R
3G
LTE
Eco-systems enabled by trust
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Mobile Computing
Browsers,
Javascript,
HTTP, TLS
Platforms and community development
What is Required to Enable the Internet of Things?
Smart, low-power, connected devices
Standards based internet capabilities
Cortex-M
nodes
Cortex-A
Internet of Things
IEEE 802.15.4
Devices
Applications
nodes
Local
processing
Security
Data Storage & Analytics
Communication
Management
Discovery
Applications
Big Data
Device
Security, Trust and Scale
Eco-systems enabled by trust
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Platform
Platforms and community development
Next Era of Embedded Development
Assembler
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C
Platform
mbed Platform
HDK
SDK
mbed
Compiler
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Component
Database
IoT Connectivity in mbed SDK
Now
Ethernet
Wi-Fi
Cellular
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New
Next
Bluetooth LE
802.15.4
BLE APIs
in Beta
802.15.4
6LoWPAN
Supporting Tools
Free Online Development
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Online Collaboration Tools
Agenda
 The new mbed mission
 Industry collaboration
 Creating better open ARM hardware (with an IoT focus)
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Industry Collaboration
Cloud
Services
Carriers
Enterprise
mbed
MCU
Vendors
Hardware
and OEM
Component
Vendors
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MCU Vendors
 Deep relationships enables influence
Cloud
Services
 New features
Carriers
Enterprise
 New best practices
mbed
MCU
Vendors
Hardware
and OEM
Component
Vendors
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 Understanding and addressing new markets
Component Vendors
 Quite often are different divisions of our
Cloud
Services
Carriers
MCU vendors
Enterprise
 Composable designs
mbed
MCU
Vendors
 Showcasing their offerings
Hardware
and OEM
 Hardware reference
 Software drivers
Component
Vendors
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 Production test
Hardware and OEM
 Manufacturing is easy!
Cloud
Services
Carriers
(When you know how)
Enterprise
 Alignment with manufacturing houses to
help smooth the transition to production
mbed
MCU
Vendors
Hardware
and OEM
Component
Vendors
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



Component Libraries
Test infrastructure
Best practice
Leading the way
Carriers
 Carriers all have their own M2M strategy
Cloud
Services
Carriers
 Some Vertical, some Disaggregated
Enterprise
 Large customer base, process driven
 Very high MOQs
mbed
MCU
Vendors
Hardware
and OEM
Component
Vendors
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 Biggest challenges are the business models
 Other Technologies coming along
 Whitespace, Sigfox, LoRa
Cloud Services
 Service providers looking at how to reach
Cloud
Services
Carriers
the broadest audience
Enterprise
 Ensuring production quality
 Providing starter kits
mbed
MCU
Vendors
Hardware
and OEM
Component
Vendors
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 Hardware platform support
 Adding value through carriers
 Self perpetuating ecosystem
Enterprise
 Global names, Global strategies
Cloud
Services
 Big Data platforms
Carriers
Enterprise
 Instrumentation, and Little Data
mbed
 These are the orgainsations that will
MCU
Vendors
Hardware
and OEM
Component
Vendors
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generate the volume demand (and make the
acquisitions!)
Agenda
 The new mbed mission
 Industry collaboration
 Creating better open ARM hardware (with an IoT focus)
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Creating better ARM hardware [ for IoT ]
 Better is an a misleading word.
 It will always be possible to make bad hardware
 The key is to enable a diverse ecosystem of developers to be more productive
 The mbed HDKis designed to help this
 Fragmentation is the real competition, or even enemy
 Collaborative consolidation of technology, products and services
 Black-boxing and abstracting is the way forward
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Fragmentation - The “F” word
 Fragmentation is an issue for commodity technology
Debug probe poviding USB to JTAG/SWD bridge
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Enough already!
CMSIS-DAP
 Invented as a standard way of exposing the Coresight DAP instruction set
 Its non-proprietary, its just the DAP instruction set!
 Commoditises everything between the SWD connector and the host debug driver
 First implementation was over USB, but the transport could be anything
 Exposed as a USB HID end point
 Debug/programming can now be done in any tool/language that can bind to USB HID
 Custom tools, custom debug scripts – the power is in the hands of the developer
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Flash Algorithms – (A personal pet hate!)
 The complexity of the flash algorithm is in the debug host
 Flash algo and routines downloaded to SRAM and executed
 The hard-to-debug algo work is replicated over and over
 The debug host shouldn’t care about the algorithm – No one should care!
 Silicon partner should provide algorithm in on-chip ROM, or standard flash location
 Standard API, called through DAP
 A long term goal..
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Hardware libraries
 Component tree sourcing remains a barrier at low volume, just to get something made
 At higher volume optimisation makes sense
 At very high volume, it will be done for you!
 Seeedstudios Open Parts Library is and an interesting initiative I see a lot of value in
 (80% of the tree is already there!)
 A kit exists!
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Software best practices
 I’ll not talk about this too much
 See Bogdans presentation for more details 
 12:00, Firmware Sala
 Initiatives around Test Driven Development and Unit Testing
 Get developers thinking about test at the start, especially if their goal is production
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Hardware best practices
 Seeedstudio spend 2-4 weeks per 3rd party
project developing the test software and jig
 Test only considered at the production hand off
 Hardware respins common
 Test software written from scratch
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mbed HDK – Pulling it all together
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mbed HDK Pulling it all together – Debug interface
 A series of debug interface reference implementations at schematic level
 Includes CMSIS-DAP support
 Includes Drag and Drop, USB UART
 Implementations with each silicon partner
 Built in alignment with OPL
 Includes board level test hooks
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mbed HDK Pulling it all together – Components
 Component vendors and partners add components
 Composable subsystems (complete, with passives etc)
 Critical layout as needed
 Built in alignment with OPL
 Includes board level test hooks
 Component software for HDK implementation
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mbed HDK Pulling it all together – debug interface
Debug interface source
under Apache 2.0
Specification
maintained by Keil
Includes flash
algorithms
Exciting new
features 
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CMSIS-DAP
Drag and Drop
USB UART
…
Roadmap
Debug interface source builds for
specific HDK implementations
(not examples!)
mbed HDK Pulling it all together – The future
 All speculation at this stage, but I believe that :
 The HDK can be extended to offer features to smooth the transition to production
 There is work to do on new EDA/CAD tool flows
 For IoT, communication modules will become the focus
80% of the resources
Complex design (hardware and software)
Complex and expensive qualifications
HDK will start to include mbed enabled, qualified modules soon!
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Thank you for listening!
Questions?
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