OREANDA-NEWS. Marvell, a world leader in storage, cloud infrastructure, Internet of Things (IoT), connectivity and multimedia semiconductor solutions, today launched a highly optimized suite of IoT application processors for home automation, industrial, and wearable applications. Purpose-built as part of Marvell's IoT Application Processor (IAP) family of products, the IAP220 System-on-Chip (SoC) enables the low-power and high-performance computing necessary for many IoT products, and features an ARM® Cortex®-A7 dual core processor.

"Marvell's new IoT Application Processor suite, including the IAP220 SoC purpose-built for embedded devices which complements our current shipping IAP140 SoC, expands the company's industry-leading connectivity portfolio and anticipates the needs of customers bringing the next wave of IoT products to market," said Philip Poulidis, Vice President and General Manager, Automotive, Wireless and Internet of Things Business Units at Marvell Semiconductor, Inc. "Our IAP220 SoC provides full multimedia support, an integrated sensor hub, and a comprehensive 'silicon and software' solution for developing super-low-power Internet-connected devices with bandwidth-hungry applications."

"As manufacturers develop more feature-rich and increasingly compact connected devices and wearables, demand is rising for power-efficient application processors," said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst of The Linley Group. "Marvell's highly integrated IAP processors and software stack provide OEMs with a comprehensive solution for IoT systems, allowing them to quickly develop innovative products while minimizing the number of components."

Features of Marvell's IoT Application Processor suite

  • Marvell's IAP220 SoC provides fully integrated multimedia support including 3D graphics engine, display controllers, digital video camera interface, and video encoder and decoder—making the SoC well suited to home automation products with a touchscreen and high-level OS, such as smart appliances and security systems.
  • The IAP220's integrated sensor hub enables rapid and low-power sensor input processing, making the SoC ideal for context-aware IoT devices in industrial automation and smart energy management. This has been accomplished with API support for customization and management of various sensors, management of all I/O independently from the processor and in a very modular fashion, and wake up of the CPU only when needed for sensor input.
  • Designed for IoT products that operate for long periods of time on the same battery—such as smart watches, fitness bands and other Internet-connected wearable devices with small footprints—the IAP220 SoC is optimized with an ultra-low-power architecture that includes low voltage operation, multiple power domains and a small always-on region.

Developer and Customer centric

Developers can access a complete platform that includes the Marvell® Wi-Fi® /Bluetooth® Connectivity Module, development boards based on both the IAP220 and IAP140 (a generic Linux® board, generic Linux board with the Kinoma® IoT application development framework, and an Android board will be selectively available), and the Marvell Sensor Board.

With the IoT application software framework Kinoma, the IAP suite offers pre-integrated silicon and software to support rapid prototyping workflows for delivering applications on a wide range of IoT and consumer electronics products. Kinoma can integrate cloud services (such as Amazon Web ServicesTM, Amazon Alexa Voice Services, Microsoft AzureTM and IBM BluemixTM), and IoT framework support (such as Google BrilloTM and Apple HomeKitTM), for fast prototyping of devices that need to connect to the wider IoT ecosystem. The Kinoma JavaScript® engine is powerful while remaining remarkably compact; the KinomaJS application framework is open source and well documented.

The new Marvell IAP220 SoC is currently sampling with global customers, and the IAP140 is in full production today.