18 June 2013

It’s all about the Internet of Things (IoT) right now.

ABI Research say that 30 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020. One company enabling our connected world is Broadcom. They just came out with the BCM4390, which is designed to give 8 and 16 bit microcontrollers access to the Internet.

It combines WiFi (802.11g/g/n), a microcontroller and network stack onto a small "SOC" or System On Chip. It also supports SDIO, SPI, I2C and UART communications interfaces and runs at 5.5V down to 2.3V.

Broadcom generally only supplies to customers that purchase tens of thousands of chips, and the BCM4390 is presently only available to “early access customers,” so it’s unlikely we’ll see the chip in any Embedded Adventures products immediately.  However, it’s a major play from one of the world’s largest SoC vendors, clearly showing that IoT is being taken seriously.