20 July, 2004: Lending credence to the idea that the most expensive real estate on the planet is actually inside your mobile phone and not in St. Tropez or Tokyo, semiconductor concern Texas Instruments is accelerating the development and commercialisation of a range of one-chip handset solutions.
According to Bill Krenik, manager of Texas Instruments' Wireless Advanced Architectures programme, the company now has a one-chip 90nm CMOS global satellite positioning (GPS) solution in test. This is aimed at replacing existing two-chip radio receiver and baseband processor products. The company also already has a one-chip Bluetooth product, and its commitment to a fully integrated global system for mobile communication (GSM) product by the end of the year has been well publicised.
Last week TI announced a joint agreement with NTT DoCoMo Inc to develop an integrated, cost-competitive, multi-mode universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) wideband code division multiple access/GSM/general packet radio service (W-CDMA/ GSM/GPRS) chipset. This is to be to be used in the Japanese, US and worldwide 3G handset markets. The idea here is that an integrated UMTS digital baseband and applications processor will be developed based on TI's OMAP 2 architecture and NTT DoCoMo's W-CDMA technology for the Japanese company's 3G FOMA handsets and other 3G handsets worldwide. Again, use will be made of TI's 90nm CMOS technology.
In wireless semiconductor terms, the scramble for 'less is more' is being driven in large part by the requirement to cram more and more radio interfaces, access technologies and non-traditional functionalities into terminals without sacrificing current form factors and useful battery life. A non-exhaustive list of what services and applications future wireless terminals might be required to support could include: Bluetooth; GPRS; enhanced data rates for global evolution (EDGE); W-CDMA frequency division duplex (W-CDMA/FDD); W-CDMA time division duplex (W-CDMA/TDD); high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA); global positioning satellite (GPS) capability; digital video broadcasting - handheld (DVB-H); IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi; IEEE 802.16 WiMAX; push-to-talk (PTT); and high resolution photography. Even delivering subsets of these will be very challenging for semiconductor and terminal vendors.
NTT DoCoMo, whose 3G FOMA customer base passed the 5mn mark on 19 July, is very serious about shrinking handset chip counts. Part of its deal with TI involved an investment of some 5.5bn yen (over US$50mn) over two years (fiscal 2004 to 2005) in the US company. NTT also announced an investment of around 7bn yen (about US$64.7mn) over three years (fiscal 2004 to 2006) in Tokyo-headquartered Renesas Technology Corp. This covered the development of baseband W-CDMA/ GSM/GPRS devices. Single chip, naturally.
John Williamson |
