• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Irvine, Calif.-Based Broadcom Releases New, Smaller Wireless Chip

Posted on: Sunday, 7 September 2003, 06:00 CDT

Sep. 8--A new wireless chip about the size of a dime promises to shake up the mobile technology world, just in time for the holidays -- because it's 85 percent smaller than its rivals.

The AirForce OneChip from Irvine-based Broadcom packs a 2.4 GHz radio, power amplifier, 802.11b baseband processor and all other radio components onto a single piece of silicon and eliminates more than 100 components. Broadcom expects the OneChip will be used in personal digital assistants, cell phones, digital cameras, MP3 players and other portable devices -- even the smallest laptops.

"It's very small -- it should do some interesting things to the segment," said Rob Enderle, analyst at the Enderle Group consulting firm.

Wireless local area network technology, which allows computing devices to connect to each other and the Internet, has emerged as a major area of innovation for Silicon Valley. Companies such as Intel and Cisco are making wireless components that computer and PDA makers such as Apple Computer, Hewlett-Packard and PalmOne are building into their higher-end products. There has been a cost, though -- the chips have been too large to fit into the slimmest, most stylish cell phones and PDAs.

Enderle said the OneChip is the smallest, most power-efficient chip of its kind he has seen -- which leads him to believe Broadcom will have the market for tiny WiFi chips all to itself for the next three to six months.

Battery drain has been a big issue with wireless products, said Todd Kort, analyst with Gartner Dataquest.

"WiFi is going to use your battery pretty quickly. You've got to really want it, because you're probably only going to get 2 or 3 hours on most PDAs."

Mike Medina, Broadcom director of technology and product planning, said he expects PDA manufacturers to be the first to sell product incorporating the OneChip. Cell phone and digital camera makers are unaccustomed to building WiFi into their products, and it normally takes computer makers 12-15 months to design and build a laptop around a new technology. On the other hand, PDA makers Palm, HP and Toshiba have moderately successful products with built-in WiFi, and Sony's UX50, due later this month, has it also.

"The response has been pretty overwhelming," Medina said. "We have customers in all of the large segments that we've targeted."

Medina said that because the chip combines so many functions, it is actually cheaper to produce than its larger, more power-hungry chips. He said that when customers order in volume they can expect to pay about $10 per chip, compared to about $15 per chip for its standard WiFi product.

Medina said Japanese electronics companies have been enthusiastic about the chip, because many of their customers value the elegance of small size and portability. He said Broadcom will use this design as a starting point, and build more sophisticated wireless technology into it.

"You could envision something like this single chip in an 802.11g flavor," he said. Eventually, "we would want our PC customers to migrate to this as well."

-----

To see more of the San Jose Mercury News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.mercurynews.com.

(c) 2003, San Jose Mercury News, Calif. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

BRCM, INTC, CSCO, AAPL, HPQ, PALM,

More News in this Category