Lots of future demand for ARM. See below:
Qualcomm preps wideband-CDMA chip set
By Peter Clarke
EE Times
(10/11/99, 3:40 p.m. EDT)
GENEVA — Qualcomm Inc. is preparing a dedicated chip set that will support Wideband-CDMA. The
company is also in discussions concerning intellectual property that would allow the company to include GSM
circuits within chip sets for multi-mode handsets.
At Telecom 99, Qualcomm (San Diego) announced its intention to develop the MSM5100 chip set to support
the 1X and 3X forms of multi-carrier (MC) CDMA, and to develop the MSM5200 chip set with support for
direct sequence Wideband-CDMA .
Wideband-CDMA, otherwise known the Direct Sequence form of the frequency domain duplex
third-generation (3G) mobile communications, is likely to be deployed in Europe and Japan as an alternative to
the multi-carrier form of CDMA, also known as cdma2000, which is also supported by Qualcomm.
The MSM5100 is an upgrade to the MSM5000, which only supports the 1X mode. The MSM5000 is set to
begin fields trials in South Korea in the first quarter of 2000, with commercial production to follow those trials.
Qualcomm was at the center of a row over intellectual property earlier this year concerning patents held by
Qualcomm and L.M. Ericsson. The dispute, which risked derailing standards-setting procedures, was settled
when both companies agreed to share their intellectual property with others using the standards, and with
Ericsson agreeing to buy Qualcomm's infrastructure business.
Qualcomm executives gave few details and no time scales for the MSM5100 and MSM5200. Johan Lodenius,
vice president of marketing and product management for CDMA technologies at Qualcomm, said the chips will
be complete RF-to-baseband solutions accompanied by appropriate suites of software. The baseband chips will
be based on ARM processor cores and Qualcomm DSP circuits, he said. The MSM5000 made use of an
ARM7 core, but Lodenius declined to say whether the MSM5100 or MSM5200, which will be aimed at 3G
terminals, would use more advanced cores from ARM.
"We will use future versions of the ARM. We have agreements with ARM. We will use ARM9 and ARM10
when it is advantageous to us," Lodenius said.
"We make heavy use of the DSP circuits in our solutions and we can off-load a lot of the work there," he said.
"For example, speaker-independent voice recognition can be supported in the DSP without much impact on the
processor."
Lodenius stressed that the MSM5100 and MSM5200 were being designed to a common platform. "It's not a
question of when we put the chips out. It's a question of what the market wants," he said.
CDMA 1X terminals are due to be deployed towards the end of next year, creating a demand for MSM5000
silicon. MSM5100 and MSM5200 could be expected to follow later.
Lodenius would not say whether Qualcomm will produce versions of the chip sets re-optimized for use in
basestations. "We will remain in basestations. But we can do things differently in basestations because the
constraints are different. So basestation versions may evolve differently," he said.
Also at Telecom 99, Qualcomm said it was looking at integrating GSM (Global System for Mobile
communications) circuitry into future chip sets to better support the design of multi-mode terminals.
"We have to work with GSM," said Irwin Jacobs, chairman and chief executive officer of Qualcomm. "We've
been having such discussions. It's mainly a matter of intellectual property and timing rather than technology," he
said. |
