IoT Market to Boost Scale of Multicore MCU Shipments

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According to a new market study by ABI Research, a leader in technology market intelligence, the IoT market will be responsible for 150 million unit shipments of multicore microcontroller unit (MCU) chips in 2015, with that number to rise to an impressive 1.3 billion units by 2020, a 54% CAGR. Industrial IoT, wearables and smart home are the current key market drivers, with the majority of the future growth coming from the smart home industry, which will represent 450 million of the total multicore MCU shipments, accounting for 36% of market share by 2020. This growth will be driven by more integrated connectivity and sensor processing hubs and an ongoing shift toward implementing innovative software solutions.

“Traditionally, device manufacturers tend to use multiple single-core MCUs to handle a device’s multiple sensor functions and connectivity solutions,” says Malik Saadi, Vice President of Strategic Technology at ABI Research. “While this trend continues to be a dominant strategy due to the design simplicity, faster prototyping and time to market of single-core MCUs, such an approach yields products with little or no flexibility for over-the-air updates, resulting in limited product lifespans.”

To accommodate future IoT applications, network scalability, interoperability, embedded intelligence and, most importantly, energy-efficiency are necessary components for the next generation of IoT devices. Such requirements will afford future devices the flexibility to provide longevity and handle constant updates, while making it a necessity to integrate a multicore MCU. Subsequently, the multicore MCU will empower intelligent software to support innovative features and advanced functionalities, such as sensor fusion or artificial intelligence.

There are already well-established low-power, low-cost multicore MCUs available on the market, many of which include integrated connectivity, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and IEEE 802.15.4, as well as various MEMS sensors, such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, temperature and magnetometers. Some MCU vendors, such as Freescale and Texas Instruments, are strategically preparing for the future by proactively adopting strategies for multicore MCUs, targeting heterogeneous connectivity and sensor functions. Others, however, such as STMicroelectronics and NXP, are lagging behind, partially due to their heavy focus on legacy products and clients, which, in most cases, do not require advanced capabilities and do not involve innovative software solutions. 

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