Intel Corp (INTC)

[Unkwn]

On the hardware side, there will be more required than embedded microcontrollers such as:

- More performance (more sensors, more data fields, real-time data stream rather than sampling)
- Wireless capabilities (can't run a CAT5 or other networks in all cases)
- More memory (in some cases, data would have to be stored locally)

I guess that depends on your definition of a controller. Today, these are mainly small processors with integrated memories, a bunch of peripherals and programs executed from flash memory, running at up to 100MHz.

Sure, if you want better performance and more design flexibility, you could use external SRAM and flash memory. As far as I know, a Cortex M7 is already capable of doing this and you certainly can integrate an SRAM interface into some standard microcontroller chip.

To me, the biggest difference to a general purpose platform is of embedded type. In general, I don't want to install a video game on my sensor. This may be the case on my smartwatch, so that's kind of a corner case, but most of the applications that are mentioned around IoT, like sensors and such, have much different requirements. Things like realtime capabilities come to mind, or robustness together with price sensitivity (the sensor mustn't cost as much as your smartphone or smartwatch) and (ultra) low power. These are all things where highest integration is needed (e.g. tightly coupled memories and in-place execution from integrated flash are almost always lower power than external memories). You can integrate a lot at 22nm or 14nm, so Intel should invite everyone to fab their designs. Sure, Intel can provide some standard designs around their x86 IP, but it would be stupid to make this a must, since they won't get paid much for these designs anyway. Most of the money here, if any, is made with the silicon.