New Memory Radio Chip
Source: The Boston Globe
Stepping up its push from computing into communications, Intel Corp. is set to announce details today of a new combination memory-radio chip it hopes could revolutionize wireless phone design.
Intel will be battling with industry giants such as Motorola and Texas Instruments, and the smaller Skyworks Solutions of Woburn, for a foothold in a market that could lead to cellphones that have longer battery life and can support full-motion video and high-end games on their screens.
Intel’s new chip will compress functions now split among two or three chips inside a phone. That will free up space and battery power and lower the cost of adding features to cellphones, such as small digital cameras, AM-FM radios, and digital music players.
Key software applications for the device are being developed at Intel’s Hudson plant. The technology has its roots in the so-called StrongARM chip developed by the former Digital Equipment Corp., which sold the Hudson site and technology to Intel in 1998.
“It significantly reduces the cost for a handset while at the same time it gives you longer battery life and higher performance,” said Michael Intrieri, a senior Intel software executive in Hudson.
Intel’s PXA800F device would incorporate in a single microprocessor functions that typically are split among a chip that processes wireless signals, a processor for in-phone functions, and a flash memory chip.
The chip has 4 megabytes of flash memory and 512 kilobytes of S-RAM application-driving power. The initial version works only on so-called GSM/GPRS wireless networks, which are the dominant standard in Europe and are used in areas of the United States by AT&T Wireless, Cingular, and T-Mobile.
Intel said the chip is being made available now to handset developers and will be available commercially in the fall. It will sell for $35 per chip in volumes of 10,000 and more, which would make it, after a color screen, one of the more expensive components in a high-end color phone that has a wholesale price of around $200.
John Jackson, an analyst with the Yankee Group in Boston, said Intel’s move reflects an industrywide “goal of making it easier to build cellphones and build cellphones that have more features and functionality.”
Jackson said Intel will face enormous competition from Texas Instruments’ Open Multimedia Application Processor, Motorola’s Innovative Convergence Platform, and other offerings.
Over the last five years, Intel has invested more than $10 billion in communications technologies and start-up acquisitions in hopes of growing its small share of the telecom market to complement its estimated 85 percent dominance in the personal computer market.
—–
To see more of The Boston Globe, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.boston.com/globe
(c) 2003, The Boston Globe. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
INTC, MOT, TXN, AWE, BLS, SBC, DT
More space, science, and technology from RedNova