If there is one enduring trend for memory design in 2014 that will carry through to next year, it’s the continued demand for higher performance.

“The trend toward high performance is never going away, and research and engineering will always be focused on trying to keep up,” Lou Ternullo, product marketing director of memory and storage IP at Cadence, tells us. At the same time, the goal is to keep costs down, especially when it comes to consumer applications using DDR4 and mobile devices using LPDDR4. “Consumer applications are particularly sensitive to cost,” he says.

Ternullo believes LPDDR4 will gain a strong foothold in 2015, and not just to address mobile computing demands. Other applications that require lower cost, lower power consumption, and higher performance will benefit from LPDDR4, such as HDTVs, cameras, and other display devices — and designers will need to adapt to the demand.

But while Ternullo is bullish on LPDDR4, the reality is that LPDRR3, or even DDR3 for that matter, will be around for the foreseeable future. He notes that customers want to hedge their bets with entire subsystems that will use the lowest-cost DRAM, whatever that may be, so they are looking for subsystems that can easily accommodate DDR3 in the immediate future, but will also be able to support DDR4 when it becomes cost-effective or makes more sense.

Reflecting back on the year nearly ended, here is a compilation of the top attention-getting articles in the Industrial Control DesignLine. Each of these top 10 articles received more than 10,000 page views, testifying to their immense popularity.

Top Robot Stories of 2014
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325036&

The State of Consumer Technology at the End of 2014
http://stratechery.com/2014/state-consumer-technology-end-2014/

While the modern computing era in many respects began with the IBM System/360 mainframe and further expanded with the minicomputer, normal consumers didn’t start encountering computers until the personal computer. And, while mainframes are technically still around (while minicomputers are decidedly not), what is unique about the PC is that it is very much still a part of modern life.

In fact, one of the defining characteristics of the three major epochs of consumer computing – PC, Internet, and mobile – is that they have been largely complementary: we didn’t so much replace one form of computing for another insomuch as we added forms on top of each other.

Every epoch has had four distinct arenas of competition that emerge in order:

The core technology
The operating system (i.e. the means by which the core technology is harnessed)
The killer use case for:
Work/Productivity
Communication

Certainly computers can be used for more than work/productivity or communication, but those two use cases are universal and lead to the biggest winners and most important companies.

Epoch One: The PC
The PC epoch began on August 12, 1981. That is the day the IBM Personal Computer was released with an Intel 8088 processor running Microsoft DOS 1.0.

Epoch Two: The Internet
The Internet epoch began 14 years after the PC epoch, nearly to the day, with the Netscape IPO on August 9, 1995. The core pieces of the Internet had been around for years, and the World Wide Web was developed by Tim Berners-Lee and formally announced in August 1991 (clearly August is an auspicious month), but it was the “Netscape Moment” that woke everyone up to the possibilities of the Internet.

Epoch Three: Mobile
I would like to choose Google’s acquisition of Android as the beginning of the mobile epoch, just because it happened in August (2005, in this case), but the date that matters is January 9, 2007, when Steve Jobs announced Apple’s iPhone. The core technology was the smartphone; while Nokia, Palm and Blackberry had been building precursors, it was the iPhone with its multitouch screen, unfettered Internet access, and (eventual) App Store that defined the category.

The Mobile Work/Productivity Space
If the PC epoch was about being omnipotent – computers can do everything, better! – and the Internet epoch about being omniscient – with Google, you can know everything – mobile is about being omnipresent. By virtue of being, well, mobile, smartphones extend computing to every aspect of our daily lives. That is why the killer applications and dominant companies in the mobile work/productivity space will be defined by how they bridge the online and offline worlds.

It’s undeniable: 2014 was the year when the electronics industry decidedly and collectively moved forward to push the Internet of Things (IoT).

For evidence, look no further than the myriad mergers and acquisitions among chip vendors, system companies, and software vendors this year — many in the IoT space. Beyond the usual reasons for consolidation (economy of scale, eliminating competition, expanding revenue), many companies scrambled to make deals specifically to get IoT technologies and products that were missing from their portfolios.

Google’s acquisition of Nest Labs in January 2014

Among M&A deals consummated in 2014 were Samsung’s picking up SmartThings, Facebook buying Oculus, a VR technology company, and Intel acquiring Basis Science, a smartwatch startup. At first look, these seem unrelated. But tie the common threads of IoT and wearables together, and an unstoppable market movement emerges.

Accordingly, many other chip vendors and sensor algorithm companies also jumped on the IoT bandwagon, in hopes of laying the groundwork for more useful and cost-effective IoT devices.

Sensors, MCUs, and wireless connectivity are three obvious building blocks for IoT end-node devices. Tony Massimini, chief of technology at Semico Research, adds to the list “power management, algorithm (sensor fusion), and embedded security,” driving the IoT market.

Among these prerequisites, “wireless connectivity and software (algorithms)” are the two most sought-after technologies, Massimini observes. Indeed, many M&As in 2014 have been built around those two. Expect more in 2015.

Cooley described sensor algorithms as an “IP minefield” where vendors need to look for the right partners.

Under threat
Massimini, while forecasting the number of connected devices to reach 36 billion units by 2020, cautions that “all of this new market opportunity is under threat.”

It’s because “at each point in the IoT there are vulnerabilities to malicious attacks and interception of vital information,” he says. Noting the importance of security for IoT, Massimini asks: “How valuable is the data and/or the process that must be protected? What are the consequences of not having security?” While no specific M&A moves in 2014 answered those questions, they are likely to dog the IoT industry for years to come.