Our panel discussion on “Instant-on Experience in Electronics” at the Flash Memory Summit

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Mark Franken

Now… as consumers, we want it now. Instant gratification has become the rule as opposed to the exception. Consequently, an “instant-on experience” has become critical for the practical use, and eventual customer satisfaction, of electronics.

Join us in session 108 – NOR Flash Memory: Instant-on Experience in Electronics on Tuesday August 9^th from 3:30-4:45PM at the Flash Memory Summit at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA. Chaired by Stephan Rosner – Spansion, the program will include a presentation by Cliff Zitlaw – Spansion on the Future of NOR Flash Memory as well as what promises to be an exciting and informative panel discussion with Avo Kanadjian – Spansion, Jameel Hussein – Xilinx, and Rob Cosaro – NXP Semiconductors.

The session is an open to all conference attendees. See you there!

Surveillance Cameras and NOR Flash

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Ryuta Waseda

The proliferation of surveillance cameras in the 21^st century has certainly assured that at some point in any given day it is likely that someone’s looking at you. In fact, in the United Kingdom, the use of surveillance cameras has skyrocketed over the past 20 years.

In a recent study done by law enforcement, there are more than 1.8 million estimated cameras in the UK, which translates into one camera for every 32 UK citizens (Source: Guardian UK). Many of these camera deployments have transitioned from analog to digital cameras, requiring sophisticated digital signal processing, leading to large code sizes that are perfect for Spansion high-density NOR flash. In fact, according to IDC Japan, almost 15 million IP-based security cameras are expected to be sold worldwide in 2014.

Weeks of Waiting for Minutes of Excitement

Privacy issues aside, the biggest issue with surveillance cameras is that they are always on the job and never get tired. Day in and day out, they are recording what is happening in front of them leading to weeks of monitoring the simple goings-on of life in hope of catching minutes of excitement. Fortunately, cameras are not people, so they don’t die of boredom. Of course, if you are the security person who reviews the recordings, you may die of boredom.

There is the question. How do you identify the important information amongst the “hours and hours” of recordings? One approach is simply not to record the “hours and hours” and only record key events, such as when sound or motion is detected by the camera. Of course, then the camera needs the ability to respond instantly to an event and to start the recording process. Instant-on capability enabled by Spansion NOR Flash has been a critical element in the design of these types of embedded cameras. Also, surveillance cameras must be capable of recording in the darkest, moonless nights. Since the camera sensor must capture a “wide dynamic range”, it requires more complicated algorithms for video motion analysis which increases the density needs for NOR Flash memory.

Now, this is great for watching a seldom used door, but not effective to continuous monitoring of people transitioning through a bottleneck area like immigration at an airport. In order to help make the process easier, face and pattern recognition software is used. However, in order to effectively process the faces in a timely manner, lots of data must be processed. Spansion’s fast random read performance and high-density NOR solutions make an ideal solution for these intensive surveillance requirements.

Out of Sight…Out of Mind

Some people don’t like the fact that they are under constant surveillance. Also, sometimes you want to make the surveillance apparent, but other times you want it to be more discrete. Consequently, small form factor becomes a critical design element for these solutions so that it can be hidden and placed in remote locations. Spansion’s reliability, small form factor, die Flash availability and high speed become a critical part of any solution.

Femtocells: The Next Billion Dollar Market

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Anthony Le

In a previous blog, I discussed some information from a Cisco report on the massive growth in mobile data and its impact on the economics of the business for mobile network operators. Here will we explore its ramifications on the build out of future network topologies. As Lisa Su, SVP & GM, Networking and Multimedia Group at Freescale Semiconductor, discussed at the recent April IDC Smart Technology Conference in San Francisco, conventional approaches of building more macrocells by mobile network operators (MNO) will not cost-effectively meet the mobile data growth requirements. The likely answer is femtocells.

According to Infonetics in their first quarter (1Q11) 2G/3G/4G Femtocell Equipment Market Share and Forecast report, the total global revenue from femtocells used in consumer, enterprise, rural and public spaces grew 45% during the past 4 quarters (from 1Q10 to 1Q11). Infonetics expects the global femtocell market to grow 31% in 2011 over 2010 to $300 million and by 2015 to be a multibillion dollar market.

So what is a femtocell and why does it matter?

More complex heterogeneous network topologies will need to be created in order to meet the specific demands of the mobile data community. Yes, of course, macrocells will remain the main guts of any service provider’s mobile network. However, given their high cost and NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) considerations, other tailored approaches, such as enterprise and residential femtocells, will be required.

Femtocells are portable/low-power mobile phone base stations that use a standard internet connection to link with the MNO’s network. They provide great coverage over a limited area to a single MNO and are often integrated with other technologies, such as DSL modem, WIFI connectivity, etc. In addition to the restriction to a single network, you can restrict which phones can use the network to provide a private femtocell for a residence or provide an open femtocell for an event.

For instance, when a major technology conference hits a convention center, larger femtocells can be rolled up for a temporary increase in coverage and bandwidth to handle the peak load requirements of all those additional smartphones, tablets and temporary hotspot connections. Similarly, enterprises using femtocell technologies, can potentially offer better coverage and reception for their employees. Service industries, such as hotels and multi-unit dwellings, can do the same for their customers. Finally, individual femtocells can be used to provide coverage for households that have bad or non-existent coverage.

So what does this mean for embedded systems?

More complex networks will require more intelligent network devices. Consequently, developers of these solutions will need to design more sophisticated on-board software and management, most of which is best executed on Spansion NOR flash.

Since these systems are more numerous and widespread, they need to be more reliable and last longer. Once in place, a reliable long-lasting supply of NOR Flash memory is critical. MNOs cannot afford to have increased levels of service events or frequent technology refreshes due to obsolesces of components.

In short, the future offers incredible promise for the mobile data consumers. Feeding their voracious appetite for data and video can be a profitable endeavor if it is scaled intelligently. Otherwise, it could be very painful for the MNO’s bottom line.

Creating Electronics Innovation By Licensing IP and Technology

Posted on June 20, 2011 by John Kispert

In my journeys around the world, meeting with the leading providers of the most advanced electronics, I walk away inspired and challenged to find ways we can enable more innovation in their markets. I challenge all of my Spansion colleagues on how we can be a strategic partner to help customers innovate more efficiently and faster – to make a difference in the electronics that touch all of our lives at home, at work, on the go.

Innovation may mean different things to different people – the coolest gadget, solving new design challenges, more jobs, industry recognition and awards. For me, it means leveraging our extensive IP portfolio of more than 2,000 patents on everything from technology, know-how, process methodology and design expertise, to create new markets and new classes of products that solve our customers’ needs and substantially enhance the lives of consumers.

Today we reached a significant milestone in Spansion’s history. After two and half years of litigation, we reached an agreement with Samsung to resolve our differences and settle all ongoing patents. I am extremely proud of our engineers who have worked diligently over the years on developing Spansion’s patent portfolio. Protecting and monetizing our IP is core to Spansion’s growth strategy.

This agreement today validates the strength of our IP portfolio and demonstrates our employees’ determination and smart innovation – two important values of Spansion. We have a strong foundation to build from and we plan to expand our licensing business for both our IP and technology.

Spansion is on a path to enable innovation in next generation electronics. I look forward to innovating with our customers and the industry.

Apple’s iCloud Pushes Demand for LTE Deployments

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Anthony Le

About 25 years ago, teens were demanding, “I want my MTV” and driving cable companies to enable more entertainment content. Fast forward to today, they are screaming, “I want my Justin Bieber” streamed to my wireless device. Leading edge companies are rolling out new Cloud services to meet the demand. Now, the pressure is on the mobile network operators (MNO) to improve their infrastructure to enable the new wave of entertainment content.

This week at WWDC in San Francisco, Apple made its announcement of a new service called iCloud. Utilizing resources at a massive 500,000 sq. ft. data center in North Carolina, iCloud provides a cloud-based music synchronization service for your OS X and, more importantly, iOS devices. iCloud automatically downloads any new music purchase to all your devices over Wi-Fi — or over 3G if you choose. Moreover, iCloud is replacing MobileMe as the synchronization of all the other data types on your phone, including photos, mail, calendars, contacts, etc.

iCloud is not alone in providing rich media via the cloud; Google and Amazon both have similar services. Others services such as NetFlix, HBO to Go, etc. are not synchronizing rich media, but rather streaming them. The potential millions of iPhone iPad, Android and other users each wanting real-time downloads of music and video must be sending shivers down the spines of the operations and business people at AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc.

Enter 4G or LTE (Long-Term Evolution)

Just building more of the same 3G wireless networks will not meet the customer demand and most definitely is not financially viable. To profitably meet the upcoming bandwidth requirements of services like iCloud and other rich-media streaming solutions, MNOs must transition to LTE-based 4G technologies. So what is LTE?

Evolution is the keyword; it is the evolution from current GSM/WCDMA and CDMA networks to a new common standard that promises to be 2-5x more efficient in providing a better experience for end-users and better cost economics for MNOs. It leverages two critical new techniques for access: Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) and Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna technologies. OFDM can split the data into multiple narrowband subcarriers that handle a portion of the data at a lower bit rate and MIMO technology creates multiple paths between the device and the base station to increase the coverage due to better signal-to-noise ratios and higher user bandwidth.

More Sophistication Requires More Sophistication

Implementing LTE both at the base station as well as the mobile device is clearly challenging embedded systems designers. The complexity of delivering this new-sophisticated functionality requires increased sophistication from the embedded semiconductor solutions.

At Spansion, we are working with our partners to provide NOR Flash memory solutions to meet the needs of these LTE infrastructure systems. High reliability code and data storage is required for these state-of-the-art next-generation communications systems. Spansion GL NOR Flash memory, with its wide density range, is perfectly suited for this advanced networking gear and helps ensure systems are up and running so users get quick access to content.

Spansion Wins Award for Reclaiming 60% of Its Wastewater

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Randy Blair

Take a look at that 12-ounce can of soft drink that may be on your desk at the moment. Spansion used almost 11 of those “soda cans” filled with water (equal to one gallon) in order to make a single NOR Flash chip in Q1 of this year at its flagship Austin, Texas facility. Semiconductors benefit society in numerous ways, but there is an environmental impact from the manufacturing process; the Austin team, in an effort to minimize this impact as well as to control costs, started a multi-year water conservation project in 2001 and in the last two years has made major improvements to the system. The project was recently recognized by the City of Austin.

On behalf of Spansion, Dan Wilcox, an Austin Facilities Engineering Manager, accepted on April 21^st the 2011 City of Austin Environmental Awareness Award (in the Large Business Category) in recognition of the outstanding success of the water conservation project. By reclaiming 670 gallons per minute of clean wastewater for use as a replacement for incoming city water, the project has resulted in a 60% overall reduction in water usage. That would be 7,150 soda cans per minute!

Austin city officials not only valued the direct environmental benefits of the project, but also saw positive impacts on environmental conditions and greenhouse gases. By using less water, the city’s water utility used less electricity to produce the clean water thus reducing ground-level ozone and volatile organic compounds (byproducts of the power generation process); these pollutants are of particular concern to Austin city officials trying to meet EPA clean air requirements.

I am happy that we can celebrate this success. We believe that responsible corporate citizens realize business success while operating with the highest standards of respect for people and the environment. At Spansion, being a responsible company is our way of doing business, now and well into the future.