Chip Start-Ups Battle to Provide Network Flexibility for Cellphones
By DON CLARK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 25, 2005; Page B3
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112224041698594289,00.html?mod=technology_main_whats_news
A new breed of startups is closing in on a high-tech holy grail: chips that
could help cellphones jump between different communications networks to
give users the best service.
Sandbridge Technologies, after four years of effort on Monday is announcing
that it has completed the design of a chameleon-like chip that can
communicate using different kinds of cellular technologies as well as fast
wireless networks such as Wi-Fi. The approach uses software to give
cellphones multiple capabilities, which can be modified after they are sold
rather than having features set permanently in hardware.
"We can implement the entire system in software and it works," said Guenter
Weinberger, chief executive of the White Plains, New York, start-up. "That
is one of the breakthroughs." Sandbridge's initial shipments of sample
chips went to cellphone makers it won't yet identify, Mr. Weinberger said,
with phones based on its technology expected next year.
PicoChip Designs Ltd., of Bath, England, says it is already mass-producing
programmable chips, focusing on the base stations that coordinate cellular
networks. Icera Inc., based in nearby Bristol, says it has attracted
interest from undisclosed handset makers in its own programmable chips.
3Plus1 Technologies Inc., a Silicon Valley startup, expects to deliver
comparable technology early next year.
Backers of such "software-defined" chips believe they will hasten the
arrival of multi-function phones and other portable devices that can do
tricks like watching broadcast TV and surfing the Web at the speeds of home
broadband connections. They hope to grab a chunk of a cellular chip market
that totaled $22.4 billion in 2004, according to Forward Concepts, a
market-research firm in Tempe, Ariz.
But the startups face formidable competition. Giants such as Texas
Instruments Inc. and Qualcomm Inc., for example, are quickly making their
own cellphone chips more flexible.
Moreover, the basic idea of multifunction phones face a chicken-and-egg
problem. Though cellphone users now can roam among some networks when they
travel, carriers are not exactly eager to let users jump among services in
their home market.
"The idea of having a handset that can roam from Cingular to Verizon to
Sprint will never happen," said Will Strauss, an analyst at Forward
Concepts. "The operators don't want it to happen."
But some companies are betting that new wireless technologies, such as a
high-speed cousin of Wi-Fi called WiMAX, will allow new services to enter
the wireless market with flexible strategies. Users may one day change
networks "multiple times a day, depending on what type or kind of feature
or service might be offered by a specific network operator," predicts
Vernon Fotheringham, chief executive of Seattle-based Adaptix Inc.
His company sells technology in South Korea to help deliver a new broadband
technology called WiBro. Using software upgrades, the same equipment is
later expected to work with a mobile version of WiMAX that is being developed.
In the short-term, the software-based approach may offer other benefits to
handset makers. Until recently, adding new functions has required them to
buy multiple chips or design custom multi-function chips. Besides the time
and expense of that approach, the phones they make can't easily be upgraded
as new technologies come along.
Fans of software-defined chips also cite performance advantages. Where
Texas Instruments and others sell general-purpose chips called digital
signal processors for communications chores, the new chips are designed to
get high speed by doing specialized cellphone tasks in a parallel fashion.
"It's a very very compelling story," says Stan Boland, Icera's chief
executive officer.
3Plus1, which is aiming at particularly low cost and power consumption, has
developed a chip with specific processors for handling two different kinds
of operations common to wireless communications. Sandbridge's chips execute
eight strings of instructions once. PicoChip's products, designed for the
heavy-duty requirements of cellular base stations, have 300 processors.
There's no shortage of hurdles. Competitors such as Texas Instruments and
Intel Corp. are betting on advanced "systems on a chip," with fixed
circuitry for specific kinds of networks. They also exploring new ways to
exploit software, but see limitations; for one things, handset makers will
still need multiple transceiver chips to handle different frequencies used
by cellular networks.
"What you will find is you can't do the full job in software," argues Bill
Krenik, TI's manager of advanced wireless architecture.
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
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