Tuesday Technology Thoughts – IoT Device players

In IoT world, many times these words are being used – Chipset, microprocessor, SOC, Gateway, ODM, OEM etc..,

This blog is an attempt to make reference guide for those terms and showing involved players in the IoT ecosystem

What is a chipset ?

A chipset is a set of electronic components assembled as an integrated circuit that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals under specific family of microprocessors (instruction set)

What is SoC?

System on A chip – Putting all the electronic circuits required for a system in a single integrated circuit

For example, consider a “Mobile phone” as a system, SOC are MT6572 (Mediatek) or Snapdragon (Qualcom)

Image Source: Mediatek /Qualcomm documentation
What is a system /Device?
speaker, Camera, Mic, SIM, SD card are connected to SOC to form the whole system.

Who is ODM?

Device manufacturers make use of such SoCs and extend the connectors to form the whole device to serve a functionality (it may be phone, camera or Gateway)

In case of mobile phones – Samsung and other make use the chipset.
Similarly in IoT world, many ODM vendors make use of CHip set vendors and make gateways.

Generally ODM partners sell the product while chipset vendors are not directly working with customers.
In turn, Chipset vendors and ODM vendors form alliance.

Designing and choosing different components and making end use gateway is ODM’s play.

Unlike mobile phone industry, IOT field requires many custom designs. So the importance of ODMs increases.