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karophi
As far as I know, The last time it was in a phone was the CDMA variant of Galaxy ...
Jeanshack
When I think about 400, its not a huge number, there is tremendous effort ...
Yoshida in Vegas: Chasing elusive LTE design wins
Junko Yoshida
1/16/2013 1:12 PM EST
LTE chips unveiled
It’s a long, arduous process destined to tie up a lot of resources at any company.
In talking with other industry insiders in Las Vegas last week, some speculated that ST-Ericsson or Renesas Mobile may have little choice but to be acquired by someone like Samsung Their time and resources are limited, thus making it tough for these companies to weather the never-ending process before they see production of handsets containing their chip design.
That said, I should probably curb my pessimism. Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, believes that a bunch of LTE modem design wins might be announced next month during the Mobile World Congress.
In fact, there was no shortage of new LTE chip news during CES. Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon 8000, featuring quad-core Krait 400 CPU (which speeds up to 2.3 GHz per core), Adreno 330 GPU and 4G LTE Cat 4 and 802.11ac that offers connectivity with cellular modem boasting data rates up to 150 Mbps and 802.11ac at speeds up to 1 Gbps.
ST-E unveiled at CES its NovaThor L8580 modem/apps processor based on a 28-nm FD-SOI process. The company said the multimode Cat 4 LTE chip supports up to ten LTE/HSPA/TD-SCDMA/GSM bands.
Nvidia, meanwhile, announced its new apps processor, the Tegra 4 SoC, and a separate Icera i500 modem chip that connects to Tegra 4. Icera i500, slated for roll out in the second half of this year, is a software-based modem that is “highly adaptive,” Nvidia’s senior vice president, Phillip Carmack, told EE Times. Its algorithms, for example, are flexible, adapting to very different types of networks, ranging from the Great Plains -- where the nearest cellular tower is miles away -- to a very congested network like CES, he explained. “The soft modem optimizes itself and seeks the best performance.”
When Nvidia acquired it, Icera entered the modem market late compared to competitors, Carmack said. “We’re lucky that we didn’t have to deal with legacy modems.” Every time a new modem standard emerges, most of Nvidia’s competitors kept bolting them on top of existing modems, since “nobody wants to mess with the modems that already work.”
Strauss reported that Renesas Mobile is rolling out MP6530 multimode FDD/TDD Class 4 LTE/DC-HSPA+/EDGE/GPRS/GSM modem with a quad-core apps processor employing ARM's dual Cortex-A15 and dual Cortex-A7 MPCores. Renesas Mobile’s new chip set is “said to have ultra-low power consumption, and is fully certified, but customer announcements will probably not be made before [Mobile World Congress] next month,” according to Strauss.
Meanwhile, Marvell's PXA1801 2-chip Cat4 multimode LTE modem/App Processor that features its own RF and PMIC is sampling and in certification, according to Strauss. “It will be in new RIM Smartphones,” he predicted.
Related stories:
CES slideshow: Next big (or little) things
CES slideshow: Gadgets galore at opener
Renesas big-little LTE processor wins praise
It’s a long, arduous process destined to tie up a lot of resources at any company.
In talking with other industry insiders in Las Vegas last week, some speculated that ST-Ericsson or Renesas Mobile may have little choice but to be acquired by someone like Samsung Their time and resources are limited, thus making it tough for these companies to weather the never-ending process before they see production of handsets containing their chip design.
That said, I should probably curb my pessimism. Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, believes that a bunch of LTE modem design wins might be announced next month during the Mobile World Congress.
In fact, there was no shortage of new LTE chip news during CES. Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon 8000, featuring quad-core Krait 400 CPU (which speeds up to 2.3 GHz per core), Adreno 330 GPU and 4G LTE Cat 4 and 802.11ac that offers connectivity with cellular modem boasting data rates up to 150 Mbps and 802.11ac at speeds up to 1 Gbps.
ST-E unveiled at CES its NovaThor L8580 modem/apps processor based on a 28-nm FD-SOI process. The company said the multimode Cat 4 LTE chip supports up to ten LTE/HSPA/TD-SCDMA/GSM bands.
Nvidia, meanwhile, announced its new apps processor, the Tegra 4 SoC, and a separate Icera i500 modem chip that connects to Tegra 4. Icera i500, slated for roll out in the second half of this year, is a software-based modem that is “highly adaptive,” Nvidia’s senior vice president, Phillip Carmack, told EE Times. Its algorithms, for example, are flexible, adapting to very different types of networks, ranging from the Great Plains -- where the nearest cellular tower is miles away -- to a very congested network like CES, he explained. “The soft modem optimizes itself and seeks the best performance.”
When Nvidia acquired it, Icera entered the modem market late compared to competitors, Carmack said. “We’re lucky that we didn’t have to deal with legacy modems.” Every time a new modem standard emerges, most of Nvidia’s competitors kept bolting them on top of existing modems, since “nobody wants to mess with the modems that already work.”
Strauss reported that Renesas Mobile is rolling out MP6530 multimode FDD/TDD Class 4 LTE/DC-HSPA+/EDGE/GPRS/GSM modem with a quad-core apps processor employing ARM's dual Cortex-A15 and dual Cortex-A7 MPCores. Renesas Mobile’s new chip set is “said to have ultra-low power consumption, and is fully certified, but customer announcements will probably not be made before [Mobile World Congress] next month,” according to Strauss.
Meanwhile, Marvell's PXA1801 2-chip Cat4 multimode LTE modem/App Processor that features its own RF and PMIC is sampling and in certification, according to Strauss. “It will be in new RIM Smartphones,” he predicted.
Related stories:
CES slideshow: Next big (or little) things
CES slideshow: Gadgets galore at opener
Renesas big-little LTE processor wins praise
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Bert22306
1/16/2013 5:01 PM EST
This RF wireless modem business seems so difficult to me. The designs are becoming more and more extraordinarily difficult and clever, and then in the end, only a few survive and quickly become commodity items. It almost hurts to see so much effort expended, when you know that a lot of that work might never see the light of day.
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dbrochart
1/21/2013 12:16 PM EST
@Bert22306
This is because the complexity of the designs is increasing so much that soon companies won't be able to keep up with the pace of new standards. Just like it doesn't make sense to develop and maintain your own CPU, you use an ARM. It will soon be the same in the baseband business, you will let a company make the effort of designing and maintaining a scalable, software programmable IP, and just buy a license that fits your needs, in terms of processing power, size, etc. It doesn't mean that you lose a part of your business, it means you focus on what makes the difference for your product. This is just what this company does: www.simpulse-dsp.com
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skal_jp
1/16/2013 6:13 PM EST
Reading the article, I had a feeling of deja-vu. If I'm correct in the early times of computing, there were different makers for CPU (Intel, Zylog, Motorola are the first names coming to my mind). After a few years, expect for specific servers, only Intel and AMD remains (the last blow was when Apple started using Intel in its Mac series...)
Do you think the mobile business is evolving the same way and that in five years or so only two will remain...?
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GeeKv2
1/17/2013 8:13 AM EST
Its true that Samsung makes its own LTE baseband chips but it hasnt been commercialised like one would think. The last time it was in a phone was the CDMA variant of Galaxy Nexus and I havent heard of it since. To me it sounds like its just not ready for prime time. All other SSG LTE phones have a Qualcomm chip.
Europe is aggressively rolling out LTE and it will severly hurt the aforementioned 3G volume suppliers who are far from launching LTE chips
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junko.yoshida
1/17/2013 4:14 PM EST
The word on the street is that Samsung is indeed working on the LTE baseband chips for the merchant market. That, probably, is different from the one they are using in their own handsets. We just don't know when that will reach the market.
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GeeKv2
1/21/2013 7:14 AM EST
I disagree with the 'No takeoff'. One of the four companies mentioned in the first paragraph already has a LTE chip in the market, so thats a major leap and proves maturity. Lets see how the rest catch up.
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Jeanshack
1/22/2013 1:23 PM EST
When I think about 400, its not a huge number, there is tremendous effort involved with validation. The field testing involves travelling across the target market identifying operational issues, fixing them, retesting.
Tweaking the stack for performance even if it means non-conformance to 3GPP is also not very uncommon.
Imagine the number of engineers required for traveling across Europe for testing, reporting, identifying the root cause, fixing and retesting?
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karophi
5/3/2013 2:35 AM EDT
As far as I know, The last time it was in a phone was the CDMA variant of Galaxy Nexus and I havent heard of it since. To me it sounds like its just not ready for prime time. All other SSG LTE phones have a Qualcomm chip. One of my friend working at http://movingangels.com has got this phone.
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