Internet of Things: Connecting Things, People & the World

There are so many aspects of IoT (Internet of Things), that one can hardly list all the topics and issues. The number of IoT conferences these days is so large that one could just about go to one every week. Tekmos decided that one conference we really wanted to take in this year was the Internet of Things Developers Conference held May 25 and May 26 in Santa Clara, California.

The Unify Program at Tekmos focuses on the ability to unify many chips into a single package. Unify is a methodology, a capability, or a usage of technology, to yield several advantages. The users of the Unify Program are most likely to be the developers of IoT. The best place to describe the Unify Program is face to face with the IoT developers.

A short definition of Unify is the combining of chips from different technologies into a single package using a Tekmos ASIC as the base. It combines sophisticated cutting edge, off-the-shelf, chips that are inexpensive because of their volume, with added circuitry along with a Tekmos ASIC. the Tekmos chip performs like a silicon PCB. By implementing this as the Tekmos chip base with other die stacked above it, issues of mismatch pinouts between the standard parts are solved. This stack of die is in a single package. The small size of the resultant "System in a Package" (SIP) can be important for many IoT products. (Think wearables, such as fitness monitors.)

Other real advantages are cost and time to market. For example, a design with Flash memory and a microcontroller could use highly sophisticated ICs, which are already developed, mounted on a relatively inexpensive customized ASIC built with an older, less expensive technology. A common theme here is only pay for the technology you need in the parts of your system that require it. A high end processor can be mounted on a slower, less expensive technology base. The processor is inexpensive even though it uses cutting edge technology because its volume in the general market is high. This IC is combined with a specialized base ASIC that makes the design very hard to copy. Since 90% of the design implementation as utilizes commercially available parts it so far less risky than building a large expensive complex chip from scratch.

As expected, there were a number of conversations with developers that need to have small form factor and low power product designs. We are excited about the future for offering these benefits to many customers.