FPGAs solve challenges at the core of IoT implementation

Helmut Demel, Lattice Semiconductor Corporation
EDN (July 04, 2016)

The Internet of Things (IoT) has become a wildly popular term these days, often used to describe a world in which virtually every electronic device connects to the Internet and each other. It comprises a staggering list of applications—everything from smart consumer appliances and vehicles to wearables—and that list will only grow as mobility continues to explode. But this growth brings with it implementation challenges to which solutions need to be found.

Smart, connected devices, and the IoT ecosystem they are helping to create, promise to transform everyday life. For individual consumers that might mean making devices more efficient and cost effective for their daily tasks, keeping them safer, or even helping ensure they live healthier lives. For businesses, the IoT promises significant advantages in terms of automation, energy efficiency, asset tracking and inventory control, shipping and location, security, individual tracking, and energy conservation.

But to reach the tens of billions of devices projected to make up the IoT, designers will have to overcome significant implementation challenges. Some of the key among them will be making IoT devices power efficient, handling incompatible interfaces, and providing a processing growth path to handle the inevitable increase in device performance requirements. An FPGA-based design approach can help address such challenges.

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