Participants in Improv's Ensemble Partner Program will offer complementary products and services for next-generation communications chips for a wide spectrum of applications, including broadband connectivity, voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP), media processing and wireless devices, Improv said.

Initial participants in Improv's Ensemble Partner Program include ARM, Artisan Components, Beatnik, Denali Software, HelloSoft, Hughes Software Systems, Intrinsix, Magma Design Automation, MIPS Technologies, RADVision, Silicon & Software Systems, Synopsys, Tality, Wind River Systems and Virage Logic.

Improv said that it is working with partners to produce tight integration between different hardware and software intellectual property, and to streamline the path to work-ing silicon.

The Ensemble Partner Program includes Platform IP vendors who provide intellectual property that, combined with Improv's Jazz DSP cores, is used to develop complete SoC platforms. The Ensemble Platform IP partners include ARM and MIPS Technologies for embedded processors; Denali for configurable memory controllers; Artisan and Virage for memory compilers; and real-time operating system supplier Wind River.

Design-services companies Tality, Intrinsix and Silicon & Software Systems have joined as Ensemble Approved Design Center partners. Improv currently has Application Solution Kits for the VoIP market. For more information, visit www.improvsys.com.

Intellectual-property provider TTPCom Ltd. planned to demonstrate this month its first iteration of a combination Global System for Mobile Communications and Bluetooth device.

The company's goal is to create an integrated device that costs $3, cheap enough for second-tier OEMs to build Bluetooth-enabled cell phones, said Charles Sturman, Bluetooth product manager for TTPCom. So far, TTPCom has combined application-level Global System for Mobile Communications and Bluetooth software onto a processor embedded in the GSM baseband chip.

The second and more complex step, which TTPCom expects to complete within a few months, is to integrate the real-time elements of Bluetooth software-the so-called link controller layer-onto the GSM baseband.

Finally, by the second half of 2002, TTPCom hopes to have its GSM and Bluetooth cores integrated as a single baseband chip. While Nokia and Ericsson are likely to accomplish the same feat, TTPCom is aiming to bring the integrated technology to lower-tier OEMs who want to build inexpensive Bluetooth-enabled handsets, Sturman said. More information is available at www.ttpcom.com.

Edited by Michael Santarini with additional reporting by Craig Matsumoto.