Chip & Semiconductor News
Mobile devices have always been a major market for chip suppliers, but the number and type of semiconductors used in wireless gadgets has grown as the products have got more sophisticated. Traditionally there were baseband and RF, with limited processing power and memory. Now smartphones and tablets sport multicore application processors, radios for five or six connections in several spectrum bands, and are starting to include dedicated graphics or video processors too. For midrange models this has created a boom in highly integrated systems-on-chip for phones. Not to mention the chips that drive touchscreen displays, plus large amounts of memory. All this has lured a large number of suppliers into the mobile market and shifted the balance of power. Many firms have defocused on basebands, leaving Qualcomm dominant, but conversely, there is far more competition for the processor space. Texas Instruments, Intel, Nvida, Freescale, Marvell, Samsung and Broadcom are all fighting for a piece of the Qualcomm kingdom, and new players are coming in from China and Taiwan too.
Click for TI packs seven radios into one chip
Packing numerous radios into a chip while keeping power consumption low is one of the key challenges of mobile device design, and Texas Instruments is the latest to up the ante against arch-rivals in ...
- TI and STMicro address internet of things
- ARM sets new bar for smartphone power efficiency
- TI working on OMAP with all-day battery life
Mindspeed claims first in multimode small cells
15 February, 2012
Base station SoC maker incorporates technology from its Picochip acquisition to launch 3G/LTE base station on chip
Renesas Mobile slashes cost of supporting LTE
15 February, 2012
Announces one of the first smartphone basebands to support LTE and HSPA in one chip, targeting 4G devices priced as low as $150
Intel stalks Freescale with Crystal Forest
15 February, 2012
Combines Xeon processor with specialized communications chipset to push x86 into the high end data plane
MediaTek moves upmarket with Android/HSPA chip
13 February, 2012
2G mass market player eyes sub-$200 smartphones and signs Lenovo, chasing Spreadtrum's 3G deals with Samsung
Broadcom launches backhaul unit on a chip
7 February, 2012
Latest result of its Provigent acquisition combines RF and baseband on single platform for outdoor or split-mount microwave products
Qualcomm buys MEMS display specialist
26 January, 2012
Pixtronix's PerfectLight technology could boost the chip vendor's own Mirasol in mobile display market
FEATURED STORIES
- Intel integrates radios into Atom with Rosepoint - 20 February, 2012
- Apple marshals EC authorities against Motorola - 20 February, 2012
- AT&T and LightSquared cast about for friends - 17 February, 2012
- FCC's deals likely death blow for LightSquared - 15 February, 2012
