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Samsung product shot of Bio-processor concept

With the rapid growth in wearables, and the resulting diverseness of "quantified-cocky" applications, it was only a matter of time before bit vendors started developing custom VLSI to shorten development cycles and decrease cost for consumer hardware vendors. Samsung announced what it calls the Industry'south starting time Smart Bio-Processor. This all-in-1 fleck can not merely monitor centre rate, but body fat, skeletal muscle mass, eye rhythm, pare temperature, and stress level.

Versatile sensing integrated on-chip

Samsung's Bio-processor collects and analyzes a wide-variety of health dataEarly on fitness and wellness-monitoring devices depended almost entirely on center rate monitoring. But as applications have become more than sophisticated, the need for recording other bio-metric data has increased. In particular, Samsung has likewise integrated Analog Front Ends (AFEs) for bio-electrical impedance and analysis (BIA), photoplethysmogram (PPG), electrocardiogram (ECG), skin temperature, and galvanic peel response (GSR). Similar to the fashion advance prototype processing chips integrate a variety of application-specific and general purpose components, the Samsung Bio-processor also integrates microcontroller units (MCU), a ability management integrated circuit (PMIC), a digital bespeak processor (DSP), and eFlash retentiveness into a single package.

Multiple reference platforms also launched

Samsung is as well making reference designs for wrist bands, boards, and patch-type devices bachelor to OEMs. They are planning to ship the Bio-Processor to customers in volume sometime in the offset half of 2016. Samsung sees the availability of the new bit as enabling new applications, in improver to allowing more efficient wearables. According to Ben K. Hur, Vice President of marketing, System LSI business at Samsung Electronics: "Samsung's Bio-Processor, which can process v different biometric signals, is the nearly versatile health and fitness monitoring bit available on the marketplace today and is expected to open upwardly many new wellness-based service options for our customers."

High-powered, but low ability consumption

Samsung believes its Bio-processor will greatly reduce the power requirements of wearablesAccording to Samsung's product catalog, the bit has 512KB of Flash, 256KB of RAM, and features a Cortex M4 CPU. By integrating these processing components with the analog sensing circuitry, the Bio-processor should greatly reduce power consumption in health-monitoring and fitness applications, as shown by the accompanying chart provided by Samsung. The integrated unit of measurement is likewise just 1-quarter of the size of the discrete components it replaces.

The combination of depression power, small size, and integrated processing should help enable more compact, less-expensive wearables, with increased functionality and longer battery life. We'll be meeting with Samsung's Bio-processor product team at CES this week, and will be reporting on any additional information we get. For now, Samsung says the role is in production, although its product catalog still shows it every bit nether evolution.