Sandeep Chennakeshu, president of Ericsson Mobile Platforms here, discussed his company's search for a fab partner for its next-generation mobile platform and touted Ericsson's single-chip architecture as providing "complete freedom and flexibility to couple or decouple a telecom CPU and an applications CPU."

In San Jose, Calif., last week, Intel Corp. announced Bulverde, its next-generation Xscale processor technology, with the company's MMX multimedia extensions. Due for release in 2004, the device is designed to let manufacturers build multimedia phones without using additional applications processors.

Sitting anxiously in the wings are PC graphics chip companies struggling to stick a foot at the door in the mobile market. Depending on the timing, Intel's Bulverde launch or the introduction of Ericsson Mobile Platforms' next-generation single-chip architecture could, in theory, make it tough for players like ATI Technologies, NeoMagic, Nvidia and Silicon Motion to sneak their multimedia applications processors or coprocessors into mobile handsets.

At the same time, "the applications processor and telecom CPU can easily remain separate for a while," said Kathleen Maher, an analyst at Jon Peddie Research, "so that handset vendors can go for the best price." That fact is hopeful news for those building graphics chips, she said.

Chennakeshu of Ericsson Mobile Platforms made it clear that what he is looking for in a new semiconductor relationship is "a value-added foundry," not an ASIC partner. Chennakeshu, previously the CTO at SonyEricsson, believes his experience at the handset giant brings a customer's perspective to the definition of new architecture. He added that he has become familiar with multimedia features, applications and services that are in demand.

A big question, however, is how to design a "completely flexible" single-chip architecture for multimedia phones and how to determine which partitioning works best for handling different tasks between a baseband processor and a multimedia processor. "Look at today's baseband and application processors. Oftentimes, there is not just one CPU, but two or three CPUs within such a processor," observed Chennakeshu.

Clearly, Ericsson wants a single chip, but engineers also want maximum flexibility. In the cellular-handset business, "the two most important pieces are the baseband processor-the telephone part-and the applications processor: the gee-whiz part," said Jim Turley, microprocessor analyst, editor of Silicon-Insider. "From Ericsson's point of view, it makes sense to want to add, remove or change these parts from one chip to the next."

The best route to this, he said, is "to design an architecture, framework or bus structure that permits processors to be added and removed in design, before the chip is manufactured."

Flexibility is at the heart of Bulverde, which was the foundation of a combined Wi-Fi/cellular concept device called the Universal Communicator that Intel demonstrated last week. Though reminiscent of the Wanda concept device demonstrated by Texas Instruments Inc. earlier this year, Intel claims it's more than that. Intel CTO Pat Gelsinger said the device comprises a number of research endeavors, including seamless roaming between Wi-Fi and GSM/GPRS networks, advanced organic-LED displays and a more intuitive keyboard. However, according to Gelsinger, it will not be available anytime soon.

Who will set definition?

It remains unclear how much of the next-generation mobile architecture has been defined by any chip company today, and which silicon vendors are best-positioned to fulfill Ericsson Mobile Platforms' vision on its next-generation architecture, possibly at the best cost.

Mario Rivas, executive vice president for the communications business at Philips Semiconductors, wouldn't say whether his company is in the running for selection as Ericsson Mobile Platforms' fab partner.

Philips is working on "architectural mapping" that allows it to move certain multimedia features-such as MP3 decoding-from an applications processor to a baseband processor on the Nexperia platform, while keeping the integrity of real-time code. "The strategy is to make intellectual property as portable as possible," Rivas said, "by maintaining the address and data buses" between the baseband and multimedia processors.

On a broader scale, said Rivas, the industry needs a set of standards defining interconnects of the two, to allow mixing and matching among baseband and multimedia processors.

Turley observed that handset companies tend to standardize on the baseband processor, because that piece requires regulatory approval. "The applications processor is much less critical, so you have room to experiment."

While there remains a window of opportunity for graphics vendors, no 3-D graphics chip companies have been very successful in handsets, said Turley. The ICs are far too powerful and power-hungry for battery-sensitive mobile designs, he noted.

Nvidia, however, is trying to take on the likes of TI and Intel in this space. The company, with a team of engineers dedicated to handheld devices for almost a year, recently doubled its engineering staff to about 70 people by acquiring MediaQ, said Manish Singh, director of product marketing at Nvidia's handheld-product division. By completing the integration of the two teams, "we can bring to the mobile-handset market our products featuring camera/imaging, or 3-D graphics technologies, much sooner than either company could have done [alone]," said Phil Carmack, Nvidia's vice president and general manager responsible for handheld products.

Carmack, although not ready to chart a long-term road map, claimed that Nvidia-a $2 billion graphics chip company with a diversified portfolio-has important intellectual property relevant to mobile handsets. Working with top content creators of gaming software, "[we] could have profound influence" in defining the next-generation mobile-gaming experience, said Carmack.

For its part, ATI appears to have found a niche in a new PDA/portable game console launched last week by startup Tapwave, by offering an Imageon graphics accelerator that works in conjunction with Motorola's ARM-based Dragonball family processor, called i.MX1.

Silicon Motion, a low-power, video/graphics IC vendor, is carefully avoiding the mobile-handset market for now, focusing instead on vertical, embedded markets such as PDAs, telematics and other non-PC products with its new power-efficient SM501 mobile multimedia coprocessor.