ARM's strategic layout in the field of Internet of Things

fish001

ARM's strategic layout in the field of Internet of Things [Copy link]

As the shipment of ARM chips increases, the confident ARM company's strategy and ambition to unify the software and hardware platform become more and more prominent. Initially, ARM only sold its intellectual property (IP core) to major chip companies. Since ARM was at a disadvantage at the beginning, it gave chip manufacturers a lot of autonomy. In the era of ARM7, ARM9 and ARM11 chips, we know that the address space and register operations of each chip are different and different. We can only find the existence of ARM when compiling the code. ARM then launched the Cortex series of chips. As I mentioned in my previous article, its ambition is not small: "It tightened the shackles on the major chip manufacturers that had already been tied to its chariot, and further restricted the architecture of ARM's latest core, such as the restrictions on SysTick, NVIC and FMSC chip design. In particular, the introduction of the CMSIS interface standard has simply strangled the necks of major chip manufacturers. If they do not join this plan, they will inevitably be marginalized. If they join, they will inevitably become a production workshop of ARM." I don't know whether ARM has made Android a success, or Android has made ARM a success. The biggest difference between the embedded field and the PC field is that embedded chips are different from X86 chips. X86 is mainly controlled by Intel, so Microsoft + Intel's combination of software and hardware can easily dominate the world. The embedded chip field (32/64-bit chips are mainly ARM chips) belongs to the era of warlords (but now Qualcomm has the spirit of the post-Intel king). Each manufacturer basically acts independently, and the register operation of each chip is quite different, so it is very difficult for the operating system developers to run on it (so the BSP for the underlying operating system is basically developed and provided by chip manufacturers themselves). ARM's efforts to launch Cortex chips and interface standards such as CMSIS are to simplify or reduce the difficulty of this development and lay a solid foundation for a unified chip hardware platform. From the current situation, in the embedded field, Android has replaced Microsoft's historical position in the soft aspect. Is Qualcomm the company in the hard chip aspect? Personally, I think ARM will never let a chip company dominate, so ARM has returned from the Western Zhou Dynasty, which was similar to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, to the unified Eastern Zhou Dynasty, and continued to operate unified hardware chips. I think Qualcomm's dream of becoming a powerful Qin and unifying the world will never come soon. Let's get back to the point and talk about ARM's strategic layout in the Internet of Things. ARM has acquired the Finnish Internet of Things software startup Sensinode, and will continue to promote and deepen Sensinode's three major products: NanoStack, NanoRouter and NanoService. In response to this news, some websites commented that "it seems that the dominance of the mobile phone and tablet markets cannot satisfy ARM's appetite, and swallowing the entire Internet of Things is its goal." In 2020, according to IMS Research's forecast, there will be 30 billion connected devices in the world. ARM's Cortex-M (M0/M3/M4) chip + ARM's mbed project and Sensinode's NanoStack, NanoRouter, NanoService three major products will fully cover the entire Internet of Things field from hardware to software (mobile phones and tablets generally use Cortex-A series chips, as the main force of mobile Internet, they will become the indispensable input end of the Internet of Things field. In addition, ARM chips' ambition to enter the server field should not be underestimated, which is another major field of the Internet of Things - big data - the focus). The following is a detailed introduction to the lecture "Creating Secure, Efficient, and Open Standard Iot Systems" at the ARM Technology Development Conference. From the title, it is about "Creating Secure, Efficient and Open Standard Internet of Things Systems". As for how to build it, it is to use the technology we have described above. My introduction is slightly different from Mr. Zhang's at the ARM Technology Development Conference (the order of explanation is different and the focus is different). I explain it according to my own understanding. 1. Sensor data acquisition – Simple hardware development based on CMSIS-based ARM MBED technology If you are a person with only a little development technology, such as a little C or Java, and a rough understanding of hardware, then MBED technology will quickly allow you to develop hardware (it is said on the Internet that you can complete embedded programming development in 60 seconds). If you are doing hardware prototyping, there are different chips for you to choose from, or testing and researching some peripheral devices, then using MBED technology will make your job easy and simple. What kind of technology is ARM MBED? Simply put, it has two features, which provide convenience for chip providers (or development board providers) and software developers. The first is CMSIS, which is a set of interface frameworks specified by ARM. Through it, the differences in the operation of various chips can be shielded. So for chip manufacturers, they only need to implement these specified interfaces. Second, for embedded development, building a development environment is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. Successfully writing and debugging the first program is like the birth of a child. It is difficult to complete it without some struggle and exploration. MBED technology is a set of web page compilation tools based on cloud computing, which can be programmed on various devices that can browse the web, such as Windows, Linux, and Mac. Therefore, there is no need to install debugging tools. As long as you select the specified development board, you can immediately start programming. After compilation, a bin file is directly generated, which can be burned directly to the device for operation. Another advantage is that since users are developing based on the CMSIS framework interface, in theory, you can smoothly develop chips from various manufacturers (provided that the relevant chip manufacturers have provided CMSIS support), and it is no longer a difficult decision to replace chips from different manufacturers as before. For IoT development, you can easily collect various sensor data to Cortex-M0/M3 devices through AD, serial port, SPI, I2C, USB, CAN and even Ethernet interface using MBED technology. After the collection is completed, another most important step is data upload. And this step is the technical advantage of Sensinode, a company acquired by ARM. 2. Sensor data upload –Based on CoAP communication protocol (NanoStack/NanoRouter) For a long time, the most troublesome thing in the field of Internet of Things is that there are many interface protocols, and each company has its own protocol. In this situation, collecting sensor data is a time-consuming and laborious task. CoAP is a unified protocol interface. Its advantage is not only the standard unification, but also the simplification of HTTP protocol. Its compressed data header is only 4 bytes. In this way, the amount of interactive data will be greatly reduced during the transmission process, effectively reducing the load of network communication. In addition, through the protocol proxy, CoAP can be easily converted to the standard HTTP protocol. The above is not just ARM's standard. Since the underlying communication is based on various physical links, ARM has followed or participated in the formulation of many underlying standard communication protocols. IETF, Sensinode, 6LoWPAN, Zigbee IP CoAP, TLS, OMA Lightweight, etc. With MBED as the foundation, it only takes a few minutes to integrate the CoAD protocol on Cortex-M0/M3. Data collection and upload can be said to be effectively integrated in this step. 3. Data storage, service and display - NanoServer service support Through a unified data interface, data is collected in NanoServer, and then the relevant data is browsed and displayed with the help of the NodeView Web program. 4. Summary At the bottom layer, MBED technology collects various sensor data through standard interfaces (because it is based on the CMSIS framework architecture, the user development code of chips from various manufacturers is the same). NanoServerClient and NanoStack technologies implement CoAP communication support. NanoServer service and NodeView perform data collection, data service and display. In addition, all these codes and protocol standards are open source, and users can download and understand them by themselves. Off topic: From the above introduction, we can see that ARM's own standard protocols, Android, and Java technologies account for a very large proportion. I have been attending ARM conferences since 2008, and I have watched Microsoft's technology being marginalized little by little, and finally completely withdrawing from the field of vision of ARM technology conferences. I feel sorry for Microsoft. However, from the perspective of user development, especially from the perspective of industrial control personnel development and integration, Microsoft's development tools, its localized interface, and the simplicity of development and debugging are still very marketable. Especially recently, Microsoft changed its original embedded department to the Internet of Things department, which shows that it is still optimistic about the field of the Internet of Things and is working hard to develop in this direction.