After my faithful cohorts helped dig me out of the emailanche that lasted a week in and around ESC Silicon Valley, and I found all the news that got to me and mental notes I found wandering around, it’s time to blog about what I saw in three parts: Silicon first, Software next, and Strategies shortly.

Three words: AMD is back. They’ve not only reorganized their business and their fab strategy over the last few years, but they are now cranking up the kind of technology needed for embedded markets again. The ASB2 platform is the one of particular note, with BGA Packaging and dual core under 25W TDP. Featuring an integrated DDR3 interface with ECC support, a HyperTransport 3.0 interface, and PCI Express, USB, and SATA, the platform also couples in high performance 3D and HD graphics. It’s a very competitive solution. They’ve also introduced the AM3 platform for larger, higher performance designs. Buddy Broeker showed me a few things on the roadmap I can’t talk about, but suffice it to say the Geode vacation is about to be over.

VIA also came in with their latest generation Nano-E Series processor, a native 64-bit solution running up to 1.8 GHz with an integrated media system for 3D and HD graphics. VIA’s plan is a good balance of performance at a very low power point – the 1.8 GHz part idles at 500mW. VIA is also showing off their VT virtualization technology and their PadLock Security Engine.

First there is Freescale, with their Flexis family and a complete strategy targeting medical device applications. In this family, they’ve gone after not only an ultra low power point with stop currents as low as at 400 nA in the 8-bit families, but highly accurate 16-bit ADCs (claiming 14.5 ENOB) and an integrated LCD controller. There’s also a little note on their slides with significant implications: 15 year lifecycle. They’ve got a glucose meter reference design to show off the parts, and are becoming very active with the Continua Health Alliance for devices being built with these types of MCUs.

At the other end of the MCU scale is the newly merged and quite nicely royal blue Renesas. They’ve got an interesting challenge in bringing a lot of lower end MCU products together, but they see a unifying space at the high end with a 100 MHz MCU family. Their latest RX62x parts execute from flash with no wait states at 100 MHz with 165 DMIPS, offer a floating point unit not found in most MCUs, operate at 500 microamps per MHz and 19 microamps RTC standby, and add peripherals like USB, CAN, and Ethernet.

Atmel announced their latest higher end parts, the SAM9M11, which builds on their SAM9M10 featuring an ARM926 core with a new integrated hardware encryption engine supporting AES 256, 3DES, SHA256 and more. Their point is pretty simple – if you’re connecting to the Internet, you need encryption.

Microchip had some forward looking developments I can’t talk about until June, but they’re continuing to innovate in their XLP families.

I’m sure there was a lot more, but one very interesting briefing that got to me was Redpine Signals. They’ve come out with their Wi-Fi eNbedded line, a low power 802.11n chipset and module. It’s truly an embedded solution: on chip supplicant and TCP/IP stack, <2KB driver size for a MCU UART implementation, and 30mW power consumption. It supports both 2.4 and 5 GHz operation and Wi-Fi Direct. It's a 1x1 implementation today but Redpine is looking at 4x4 soon. They are also looking at a very interesting combo that I've been waiting for - 11n plus Bluetooth plus ZigBee.