Smartphone development platform
At present, there are a number of companies are struggling to implement its Smartphone development platform, including TI, Motorola, Intel, and other wireless-chip solution giant, the performance of their platform, and the integrity of the partnership strategy, and so on the operation of the Shisuo Chang , And researchers with each other. This will be the following three major manufacturers design products with the latest platform to make a brief presentation to outline the future development of mobile phone development platform appearance.
1. Texas Instruments (TI) of OMAP (Open Multimedia Applications Platform) family
Texas Instruments (TI) could be described as a veteran in the field of wireless semiconductor strong, he's in the field of wireless semiconductors influence in the home PC with Intel machines made in the field of equal status, is now the world's most important provider of mobile phone chips. According to IDC statistics, in 2001, TI through its OMAP processors for the world to win the cellular baseband and wireless semiconductor market share of 19% of revenue, and TI also captured 30% of China's chip market.
TI's OMAP platform with scalable, flexible and open framework, has long been the best performance and low power consumption is well known. The platform is designed to use the 2.5G and 3G mobile phones can be a variety of applications, such as language processing, video streaming, video conferencing, high-fidelity audio, location-based services, security, gaming, mobile commerce, multimedia applications, such as personal management.
OMAP due to the outstanding performance of more than a decade, the development platform has been the world's leading mobile device manufacturers favor, including Nokia, Palm, NEC, HTC, Panasonic, Fujitsu and so on. TI's OMAP platform includes three components are: high-performance low-power processors, easy-to-use open software architecture and comprehensive support network:
From the above three parts of the OMAP platform for 2.5G and 3G wireless applications provides a strong foundation for hardware and software. With the platform, developers can develop in the near future a variety of multi-media mobile terminals.
OMAP platform of the main advantages of the technology embodied in its use of the "core software technology," the advantages of this technology has the following two aspects:
First of all, in order to speed up the signal processing speed, OMAP platform's core application software components to allow the use of digital signal processor (DSP), so as to enhance the end-application performance. With the bottom of the optimization software, DSP can be very low-power signal processing methods to implement these tasks in order to be able to extend battery life and can achieve a smaller size products.
Secondly, OMAP platform will enable application developers need in-depth understanding of the DSP-based hardware architecture or algorithm can use these advanced features. Developers can use the easy-to high-level Application Programming Interface (API) to facilitate access to speed up the DSP algorithm, the same set of API can run on a variety of DSP with or without the OMAP platform, which can increase the frequency of the use of the code so that the same The code is applied to different devices.
In February this year, TI also announced the launch of the latest Smartphone reference design - TCS2600, the design uses TI's latest OMAP730 processor. The design of the launch, is expected to bring as Smartphone industry a major innovation, because its price has dropped to a new level, will greatly promote the market for voice and multimedia Smartphone. The new reference design not only support the popular operating systems, such as Symbian and Microsoft operating systems and so on, and just 31mm × 53mm in the printed circuit board (PCB) on the Smartphone to provide a full range of functions at the same time the design of application performance TI is double the previous generation of products, and standby time compared to the previous solution also redouble our growth. And the older generation reference design, this high-precision components and integrated conservation design is expected to be the manufacturer's bill of materials (BOM) cost by at least 30%, while also maximizing the role as the core reference design to address OMAP730 The device has excellent performance.
In addition, TI to enrich the widely used OMAP processor family, in February 4, 2003 also introduced five new chip security with OMAP processors. This product can improve the five, including graphics, multimedia content, such as Java, as well as advanced applications of up to 8 times the performance while reducing wireless handheld devices and personal digital assistants (PDA) of the current supervision of up to 10 times. With these new application processors, mobile device manufacturers can design a longer battery life, with faster speed multimedia applications and more compact, safer and more economical equipment.
2. Intel (Intel) of the PXA800F (Manitoba) chipset
Intel has the world's most powerful semiconductor production capacity, and have strong financial support, in addition to the home PC's splendid achievements in the field of foreign, Intel is the world's mobile phones equipped with a flash and Pocket PC operating system, the largest PDA vendor. At present, including TI, Motorola and other chip manufacturers a number of mobile phone monopoly of the chip market, Intel's Manitoba chip hope it can help in this market to open a gap.
In recent years, due to PC sales growth tends to a standstill, Intel needs to succeed in the wireless market, so that their growth is sustained, and continue to play its powerful chip production capacity. To that end, Intel in February this year launched a chip called the PXA800F, the previous chip, code-named Manitoba. PXA800F is a very high degree of integration can be widely used in the field of wireless chips, the competition takes direct aim at TI's OMAP family of chips, at the same time as they have integrated DSP and ARM processor cores.
PXA800F chipset using the same industry-leading 0.13-micron technology, but Intel said that mass production may be using 0.09-micron (90 nm) production technology. PXA800F known as the industry's first on a single chip integrated GSM / GPRS baseband solutions, high-performance applications processor and Flash memory products. The processor integrates high-performance and low power frequency for the 312MHz Intel XScale processor, built-in flash memory chip 4 trillion (on-chip Flash memory), as well as 512K of SRAM (static RAM), the UN-application performance in the industry Lead. In addition, the processors also have an integrated use of Intel Micro Signal Architecture (Intel Micro Signal Architecture) of 104MHz dual-MAC DSP core (dual-MAC signal processor core), built-in 512kB of on-chip flash memory and 64kB SRAM.
PXA800F chipset, including support for color screen, voice recognition, voice notebook, Bluetooth, MP3 and MPEG-4 decoder, WAP, SMS, EMS, MMS, location, USB client, SD Card, MMC Card, Sony Memory Stick (Sony Memory Stick *) and digital camera functions. Currently, Intel has begun sampling PXA800F supply, is scheduled to the third quarter of 2003 to start mass production, each of the 10,000-volume purchasing price for the proposed 35 U.S. dollars. The adoption of new applications processors will be the end of this year or early next year, come out.
As the world's biggest mobile phone chip supplier - TI, for the release of the Intel chip PXA800F and not much reaction because their use TI's OMAP chips, and Intel's PXA800F compared with confidence, especially in the ability to deal with the budget, For example, in the H.263 protocol of the above applications, Intel's chip PXA800F need to take up the entire processor computing power, but only about half of the OMAP computing power, it can handle almost twice the OMAP. In addition, so far, PXA800F chip used not to use any of a mobile device, at present, only a handful of small Asian mobile phone manufacturers promise to buy Intel's Manitoba chip, the product is priced at 35 U.S. dollars. The Texas Instruments OMAP of 15-20 U.S. dollars chipset together with a few dollars of flash memory chips, have a similar function. OMAP chipset and has been part of the Smartphone and PDA device has been applied. TI also plans to radio frequency and analog integrated device components in the OMAP chip, it's more powerful features. From this we can see, Intel's Manitoba chip set for a short period of time TI's OMAP family of chipsets are also too did not constitute any threat.
3. Motorola (Motorola) the development of the Innovative Convergence platform
Motorola is the second TI after the world's second-largest mobile phone chip provider in the field of wireless has a 70-year history. It is estimated that in 2004, Motorola in the field of wireless chips will win 20,000,000,000 U.S. dollars in sales. Motorola raised by a new generation of mobile phone development platform known as the Innovative Convergence, including the platform i.200, i.250 and i.300 wireless platforms, i.MX family of multimedia application processors, i.JV J2METM reference tool, i.IM Image capture technology and Bluetooth i.BT program. Among them, the industry's leading i.JV J2METM reference tool for engineers to develop wireless devices to provide the latest software programs to help them speed up the JavaTM-based application integration; i.IM image capture technology to support real-time images and video; and Bluetooth i.BT High-quality programs to support the application of Bluetooth. This development platform used to develop GSM and GPRS mobile phone, be able to reduce by half the number of common components, thus preventing the development of new products to shorten the time for the 9 months or so.
Innovative Convergence platform in the wireless i.250 platform is a chip from the software for a complete 2.5G solutions, the use of the 2.5G mobile phone platform will simplify the design and production processes. This platform will be a number of tools and solutions into three main development environment:
(1) integrated research and development environment (IDE) - a complete hardware and software development environment integrates advanced GSM / GPRS chip, mobile phone reference design, GPRS and GSM communication protocol test, man-machine interface (MMI), as well as tools for application development system .
(2) Wireless Test Environment (RTE) - features include configuration tools, test and adjust the wireless features.
(3) production test environment (MTE) - provides software and debugging tools and production services, will allow manufacturers to shorten the lead time before production and rapid construction of the production line.
i.250 platform has a full suite of baseband and RF chipset, a powerful development tool, "always-on" connectivity, at the same time to support the product to seamlessly into the i.300 platform to provide the next generation of 3G multimedia solutions. Due to the highly integrated design makes the machine components is only 125, which is far lower than other competitors at least 250 components of the solution, is currently on the market system, the number of parts at least, the minimum cost design. In addition to this advantage, i.250 platform to further the following features:
* Development of simple, high plasticity. With its Java's features and industry-leading tools to create mobile applications.
* Enhance the service function of the Internet. To promote this paved the way for mobile e-commerce.
* Tested with a maturity of GPRS 8 stack-level agreements.
* Support for the chip EDGE and GPRS 12 to receive stack-level agreements.
* Support both dual-band configuration, designed to facilitate the custom area. Both configurations are 900/1800 MHz and 850/1900 MHz.
In addition to the development of 2.5G handsets for the i.250 platform, Motorola and in February this year also launched the i.300 platform for developers to provide a quick end easy access to the embedded UMTS technology. The technology for the development of voice / data phones, multimedia phones and video communications to provide a complete system solution.
i.300 platform applied to the development of 3G mobile phones, which integrates GSM / UMTS sets of RF and baseband chipset and supports Bluetooth, GPS receivers, video and image processing functions. i.300 platform for voice, data and image processing capabilities, and video transmission capacity of more advanced, the use of the platform, developers can develop and produce a more compact, lightweight, low-cost and low power consumption of 3G mobile phones.
