Lionel Sujay Vailshery
Research expert covering cloud computing and emerging tech industries
Microcontrollers - statistics & facts
A microcontroller or a microcontroller unit is a tiny computer made available on a single silicon chip. These chips are designed to serve a specific purpose and form the brain of almost every electronic device or consumer electronics of today. The development of such chips has been driven by the need to integrate functions controlled by several integrated chips into a single processing unit. When we talk about processors, we think primarily about large computers or smartphones that need higher computing power and often forget about devices such as cameras or some of the latest keyboards, mice, or webcams with low demand. This is where we find these tiny computers that run programs designed for the specific purpose of processing input or output signals.
Embedded systems
As the name suggests, this is a system developed with hardware attached or embedded to serve a specific purpose on a device. A fitting example would be home appliances such as refrigerators or air conditioners. The primary purpose of such devices is to keep the temperature constant, and a microcontroller serves this purpose. The embedded microcontroller reads the set temperature and signals the compressor for a precise amount of cooling or heating to be provided to reach the set temperature. This is just a basic example, but the applications of such embedded microcontrollers are vast, from a simple digital wristwatch to much more complex systems such as communication and navigation systems. The latest adoption of such technology is the eSIM, or an embedded SIM, on smartphones and smartwatches. With lower power consumption and the cost of acquiring hardware combined with minimal maintenance and failure rates, these embedded systems play a significant role in our daily lives.Future of microcontrollers
With the broader adoption of smart or connected devices in the realm of the Internet of Things, microcontrollers are becoming ubiquitous in modern products and machinery. TinyML, or tiny machine learning, is a field in machine learning and embedded systems that bring together the world of artificial intelligence(AI) and microcontrollers. This combination enables analytics to be run on a device without the need for sending data to a cloud computing server. Such edge devices not only process the data and provide inference with low latency but also reduce data breaches, allowing for a remarkably high level of data privacy. With the progress being made in AI and microprocessor architecture, we will see more expansive applications of this technology in more devices for improved efficiency in computing power with lower energy consumption.
