How do we manage all those blocks in an age of exploding block usage?

If you want to see what electronic design innovation is all about these days, come to the Consumer Electronics Show.

the array of technology development showcased here the first week of 2015 was breathtaking. The Sands was packed with almost countless wearables vendors, IOT systems houses, and 3-D printers

But for these guys — from a market standpoint — there’s a shakeout ahead: There are too many vendors in the wearables and IOT space making too-similar products.

Rise of IP subsystems
What’s enabling these systems innovations is of course IP. You’ve no doubt seen the slideware showing that the number of IP blocks in an average SoC has crested 100 and is moving quickly north. That’s 10 times the number of blocks than we designed in just a few short years ago.

This explosion in block usage is creating its own design complexity (how do we manage all those blocks?).

“Instead of dealing with SoC design at the lowest common denominator — the discrete IP block, SoC designers now look to move up a layer of abstraction to design with system level functionality to reduce the effort and cost associated with complex SoC designs today.”

“the start of a period in which large SIP providers will exert a concerted effort to create IP subsystems, combining many discrete IP blocks into larger, more converged IP products to offer better performance and to reduce the cost of IP integration into complex SoCs.”

Semico forecasts the IP subsystem market will double from $108 million in 2012 to nearly $350 million in annual sales in 2017. IP providers clearly understand that delivering IP is just one piece of the puzzle and that to enable system development there needs to be a subsystems push as well.

This trend — and the systems it enables — is going to drive much more rapid innovation in the months and years ahead.

TV technology was obvious a big talking point, although image resolution is no longer the main attraction. No one says “if and when 4K takes off” anymore. Sales of 4K panels are already big business, with pixel-dense TVs fast becoming the norm for any screen that aspires to be anything other than bargain basement tat.

Telly chatter instead was actually all about colour performance and HDR (High Dynamic Range).

High Dynamic Range displays offer extremely bright peak whites, without emphasising noise, sacrificing black level or bleaching out shadow detail. As a result, they can look astonishingly lifelike. The catch is that there is no consensus on just how bright an HDR display should be, although there’s no shortage of opinions either.

Behind booth doors, LG had a prototype HDR OLED display on show, but revealed scant details about its plans. Sony had a 4K sample on open display, running HDR test footage from Netflix’s Marco Polo show. Elsewhere, Panasonic invited visitors to look at an HDR prototype LED in a darkened booth.

Only Samsung actually appeared to have an HDR display ready to sell, specifically a 1000 Nit model due to ship this spring.

One new factoid to emerge from CES is that HDR will not be restricted to just 4K material, but will be introduced onto 1080p content too.

He mentioned it in passing while talking me through the state of play with Ultra HD Blu-ray. At the show, his prototype deck was running a simulated HDR demonstration from 4K media.

The other tellybox buzz at CES was Quantum Dot. QD is an advanced LED backlighting technology that offers extreme colour vibrancy, but it’s actually just one of several techniques now being pursued to create wider colour gamut displays.

LG used CES to introduce its ColorPrime TV range for 2015
Samsung is the other big brand backing Quantum Dot.

Anarchy in the UHD

The UHD Alliance seems to comprise all the same folks who already pontificate on a dozen other standards bodies and committees. Its stated aim is to bring content providers and hardware manufacturers together to create a uniform platform. When asked how it would achieve this, I was told: “We’ll issue a badge of certification.”

I can’t help feeling what the consumer electronics industry (specifically TV and home entertainment) actually needs right now is a singular vision, not infinite committees hawking logos.

One CES introduction which I think everyone should approve of is better Smart connectedness. 2015 will be the year of the improved TV user interface.

Samsung gave us the first look at its homegrown Tizen OS for TV, which appears to pay close homage to LG’s webOS platform, while LG itself offered some minor webOS improvements

Interestingly, Sony has turned to Android for its 2015 UI. The interface will be familiar to any mobile user, and majors on intelligent voice search.

Ultimately, the most interesting Smart UI came from Panasonic. Powered by Firefox, it’s slick and minimalist, yet retains much of the customisation

Inevitably there were plenty of 8K displays dotted around the show too.

OLED remains the odd duck of the TV business, with only LG championing the cause. At CES, the brand offered more OLED panels than ever, 4K flat, curved and adjustable. All looked predictably impressive.

Arguably the most interesting new screen tech to break cover at CES came from Sharp, which used its extra-subpixel Quattron technology (last seen making Full HD more 4K-ish) to create a faux 8K pixel image from 4K sources.

Side by side with a genuine 8K panel, it seemed almost indistinguishable.

Sadly, we’ll never, ever see this innovation in Europe, because Sharp actually sold off its entire European TV and AV business to Slovakian electronics brand UMC last year.

With few new devices on display at CES, the major phone makers face increasing pressure to deliver at Mobile World Congress in March.

If you look at the early news coming out of the International CES this week in Las Vegas, it is clear that the Internet of Things (IoT) is a dominant theme. With more than 900 IoT exhibitors showing products and the opening keynotes at the show IoT related, the energy behind the technology is immense. But it may be too much.

Early reports from the show are somewhat disquieting in the breadth and range of IoT offerings that are “me too” kinds of wearables and convenience-oriented products of marginal value.

Frankly, most of these new products invoke little more than mild interest in me at best, and usually elicit a big yawn. But then, I have been covering the IoT for some time now and not so easily impressed. I can see, though, how the general consumer could find these devices amazing and exciting the first time they encounter them. But that will only be a flash of interest based on the novelty of the technology. For consumer IoT to develop a lasting market, it will need to actually offer value. And for the IoT to deliver its full value, devices need to be able to connect with one another in true Internet fashion rather than be the isolated solutions that they are today.

This actually was one of the points made by Samsung CEO Boo-Keun Yoon in his opening keynote today. Yoon called for an open industry ecosystem that will allow IoT devices to collaborate and share data. Such as ecosystem would allow the IoT to more readily deliver on its promises by enabling synergies to arise from the collaboration of multiple devices after installation, providing continual innovation in services as developers figure out how to recombine these devices in new and useful applications.

Perhaps it’s inevitable, though. The early days of the Internet went through a similar stage with vast enthusiasm for all things Internet, with online companies offering services from grocery shopping to custom-roasted coffee. Most of them eventually failed because they lacked value and could not scale, taking the entire industry into a depression that took years to recover from. During that recovery, however, the industry worked out the problems uncovered in that early bloom, building the basis for the substantive online systems we see today.

CES is pushing the IoT, and it seems to me that the result will be like the dot-com bubble that collapsed in the 90s. It won’t be pretty, but perhaps it is necessary.

CES Press Release
2015 International CES to Host Largest Ever “Internet of Things” Showcase
http://www.cesweb.org/News/Press-Releases/CES-Press-Release.aspx?NodeID=bc2c6e17-3991-4897-88ab-114f115dc8b9

There are two printers being shown off at the 2015 Consumer Electronics shows which really spark our interest. They are the Voltera and the Voxel8. Each is taking on the challenge of printing circuits. They use similar techniques but approach the problem in very different ways.

The Voxel8 marries the idea of a 3D printer with a silver conductive ink dispenser. You start by modeling your entire design, hardware and electronics, all in one. The printer will then begin the 3D print, pausing when necessary for you to add electronics and mechanicals.

The Voltera is a PCB printer that uses silver conductive ink. It prints the ink onto a substrate. Pads made of the ink are used to solder the components in place after the printing is finished. The trick added to this design is the ability to print two layers, both on the same side of the board. There is a second ink material which is an insulator.

CES, the biggest tech exhibition on the planet, sets the stage for the year in tech. These trends from the show will shape technology in 2015.

Cars get more connected.

Drones and spycams. Watch out above! Drones were everywhere at CES, often hovering over attendees heads.

Wearables. Smartwatches may or may not eventually be a thing—while Sony and LG showed off new efforts, it appears the industry is on hold for whatever Cupertino brings to the table this spring.

4K goes mainstream. We’ve been seeing UHD TVs for two years now, and last year, Netflix introduced 4K streaming for House of Cards and some other programming at CES. But without enough media to watch, it was a wait-and-see proposition. That part’s over. Unlike with 3D, 4K is something everyone can appreciate immediately, and without wearing dorky, uncomfortable glasses.

3D cameras and printers. XYZprinting’s slick $349 da Vinci Junior, announced at the show, could be the catalyst for consumer 3D printing adoption. Lenovo, Dell, and Acer are among the PC manufacturers to unveil PCs with 3D cameras.

Virtual reality and curved screens. Granted, virtual reality has been a thing since the 1990s, and it’s been largely baloney throughout. But it’s different now.

The return of high-quality audio. I’ve been an audio buff for decades.
Now we’re seeing stereo systems that practically disappear into your room. Sonos was first with multi-room audio, but now everyone seems to have a solution, and where everything from showerheads to Christmas tree ornaments can deliver audio, it’s clear people are tired of seeing audio equipment mar their home décor—but they also want better sound quality.

Fast, lightweight PCs. Lenovo’s LaVie laptop and convertible are the lightest we’ve seen yet—just 1.7 and 2.0 pounds, respectively. They run on fifth-generation Broadwell Core i5 and i7 processors and SSDs, and the 13-inch displays can be configured with up to qHD resolution.