Qualcomm and Teleepoch
Enter Into a 3G CDMA Subscriber Unit License Agreement, October
6, 2007
MTN chooses Cambridge Broadband
Networks for multi-service wireless network in Rwanda, October 6,
2007
Brazilian government to
publish 3G bidding rules soon, October 6, 2007
KTF 3G service suffers
from technical problems, October 6, 2007
Argentina’s Personal
lunches 3G service in Rosario, October 6, 2007
Russia has it's first 3G
network, October 6, 2007
AT&T could drop Alcatel-Lucent
as 3G mobile network supplier, October 6, 2007
Enea Extends License Agreement
with ZTE for 3G Handsets, October 2, 2007
LG to unveil premium handsets
in Brazil, October 2, 2007
KTF 3G subscribers doubled
in less than 3 months, October 2, 2007
3G policy in India will
be non-uniform, October 2, 2007
- previous news
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Intel unveils CPU for EDGE wireless network
September 16, 2003
Designers of cellular phones based on the emerging EDGE standard will
be able to incorporate a new single-chip solution from Intel in phones
next year, the company said.
Intel's new PXA800EF chip builds upon the PXA800F, formerly known as
Manitoba. That chip, introduced in February, was Intel's first cell phone
chip to combine a DSP (digital signal processor), an applications processor
based on Intel's XScale technology, and flash memory onto a single piece
of silicon.
The PXA800F used GSM/GPRS cellular networks. The new chip takes advantage
of the faster data rates enabled by EDGE networks, which are viewed as
a stepping stone between the so- called 2.5G GSM/GPRS networks and the
long-awaited 3G networks promised by the WCDMA and UMTS standards.
GSM/GPRS carriers in the U.S. are looking at EDGE networks as a way to
compete with the CDMA2000 1x networks used by Verizon Wireless Inc. to
enable data transmission speeds greater than the 30kbps or 40kbps allowed
by GSM/GPRS networks, said Alex Slawsby, an analyst with IDC in Framingham,
Massachusetts.
EDGE networks offer transmission speeds around twice as fast as GSM/GPRS,
and about the same as CDMA2000 1x, he said.
AT&T Wireless Services, T-Mobile USA, and Cingular Wireless LLC are all
planning to move their GSM/GPRS networks to EDGE technology, said Will
Strauss, principal analyst at Forward Concepts in Tempe, Arizona.
Rolling out EDGE networks also makes sense from a financial standpoint,
Strauss said. Cell phone carriers have invested a great deal of money
into spectrum and capital equipment purchases, and can't afford to build
out extensive 3G networks right now, he said. EDGE networks are the rough
equivalent of a 2.75G network, he said.
Intel left a lot of headroom in the design of the PXA800F chip, which
allowed the Santa Clara, California, company to scale the chip up to the
performance level required by EDGE networks, said David Rogers, marketing
manager from Intel.
The applications processor on the PXA800EF runs at 312MHz. In order to
accommodate the demands of EDGE networks, Intel boosted the clock rate
on the DSP to 156MHz, up from the 104MHz on the PXA800F.
The PXA800EF comes with 4M bytes of Intel On-Chip flash and 512K bytes
of SRAM (static RAM) dedicated to the applications processor, and an additional
512K bytes of On-Chip flash and 64K bytes of SRAM for the DSP, Intel said.
Integrating the flash memory, applications processor, and DSP allows
for slightly better performance than multichip products, since the processors
can execute information out of on-chip memory faster than out of memory
located on an adjoining chip, Strauss said.
However, because 3G phones will demand as much as twice the amount of
flash memory needed by current phones, at a certain point it no longer
makes sense for cell phone chip manufacturers to integrate flash memory
onto the same piece of silicon, he said. Chip manufacturers have an incentive
to keep die sizes as low as possible, in order to improve yields and allow
cell phone designers to keep developing small phones, he said.
Texas Instruments Inc. supplies EDGE chips to Nokia, Strauss said. Analog
Devices and Infineon Technologies also manufacture chips for EDGE cell
phones, he said.
As of right now, Intel has only signed up one customer for its GSM/GPRS
PXA800F chip, Maxon Telecom in Taiwan, Strauss said.
Intel plans to support WCDMA as it moves up the ladder to 3G technologies,
Rogers said. It has not announced support for any other 3G protocols or
technologies, but is looking at supporting those standards, he said.
The PXA800EF is available in sample volumes as of Tuesday, with production
volumes expected by the first quarter of 2004, and phones based on the
chip later that year. The chip costs $30 in quantities of 10,000 units.
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3G Motorola A920
