To better serve its clients entering/in the mHealth market, Samsung Electronics unveiled the Bio-Processor, an all-in-one advanced system logic chip for the health-oriented wearables market. Now in mass production, the product is specifically designed to allow accelerated development of wearable products for consumers who are increasingly monitoring their health and fitness on a daily basis.
“With improvements in smart, fitness devices and an increase in consumer health consciousness, more and more people are looking for ways to monitor various personal bio-data, or fitness data, to constantly manage their health” said Ben K. Hur, Vice President of marketing, System LSI business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung’s Bio-Processor, which can process five different biometric signals, is the most versatile health and fitness monitoring chip available on the market today and is expected to open up many new health-based service options for our customers.”
Samsung Bio-Processor will be available in fitness/health devices within the first half of 2016.Samsung’s Bio-Processor goes beyond other solutions by integrating not only Analog Front Ends (AFE), but also microcontroller unit (MCU), power management integrated circuit (PMIC), digital signal processor (DSP), and eFlash memory. This, according to Samsung, allows it to measure AND process bio-signals without the need of external processing parts.
Bio-Processor is also incredibly small size, making it ideal for small wearable devices. Nevertheless, it integrates five AFEs, including bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA), photoplethysmogram (PPG), electrocardiogram (ECG), skin temperature, and galvanic skin response (GSR) into a single chip solution that measures body fat, and skeletal muscle mass, heart rate, heart rhythm, skin temperature and stress level, respectively.
Beyond the chip itself, Samsung has also unveiled several wearable reference platforms to demonstrate various uses cases. For example, wrist band, board and patch type reference devices exhibit the Bio-Processor’s potential by demonstrating its ability to measure multiple fitness variables on an extremely small device.
Samsung Bio-Processor is currently in mass production and will be available in fitness/health devices within the first half of 2016.