Mention of ADI in Smartmoney article on Intel..
Intel in every cell phone?
So what's Intel's battle plan? First, there's that flash-memory market, one of the fastest-growing semiconductor segments. Intel shipped its one-billionth flash chip in May, after 12 years in the business - and vowed to ship its next billion by 2002.
Then there's the central processing unit. Most phones today operate on ARM's architecture, but Intel inherited an ARM-based product line from its 1998 acquisition of Digital Equipment. It's now developing that line into the next generation of ARM chips. These will offer six times the performance of today's processors, according to Kumar. 'There's no other architecture out there that can compete,' he says.
Finally, there's the digital signal processor, or DSP, a chip that translates analog sound to digital signal. On this front, Intel has joined with Analog Devices (ADI) to make a chip with enough power for tomorrow's mobiles. Of course, going head-to-head with Texas Instruments in the DSP market will be grueling, but Peter Wolff, an analyst at ING Barings, expects Intel to be meaningful competitor.
By combining all the guts for 3G cell phones, Kumar figures Intel has cooked up the main ingredients for next-generation handsets. 'By the time 3G phones emerge in late 2001, Intel should be able to supply the CPU, DSP and flash memory while providing software compatibility with existing phones,' the analyst said in a report Tuesday. 'No other company has such a product portfolio.'
smartmoney.com
Jim |
