SiRF (San Jose, Calif.) plans to demonstrate the solution at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona next month and begin producing the part the second half of 2006.

SiRFLink1 marks the GPS chipset vendor’s foray into offerings combining its SiRFStar GPS technology with value-added wireless connectivity. It replaces discrete ICs used for GPS and Bluetooth.

The single-chip solution has a complete GPS navigation solution and a Bluetooth 1.2 compliant communication interface. The solution leverages the RF IC design capabilities of Sweden-based Kisel Microlectronics that SiRF acquired last year and the Bluetooth expertise of Impulsesoft, a Bangalore-based firm SiRF acquired Wednesday.

Based on an enhanced Bluetooth baseband core, SiRFLink1 minimizes the need to duplicate on and off-chip resources for GPS and Bluetooth, thus cutting system-level costs, according to Kanwar Chadha, founder and vice-president of marketing, SiRF.

Chadha said the chip uses advanced power management, 90-nm CMOS for baseband functions, and 0.18-nm SiGe technology for radio functions. Advanced packaging crams the chip’s functions into a single 165-pin multichip module measuring 6 x 8 x 12 millimeters.