WiMAX chip shake-out on the cards for 2007, and Intel needs to move quickly
Published: Monday 23 October, 2006
With large scale operator roll-outs of WiMAX now a real possibility, the market is poised for volume in 2007, and the specialized chipmakers that have pioneered 802.16 silicon will face a major battle to defend their territory as large players inevitably pile in. So far, Wi-Fi giants like Broadcom and Atheros are remaining coy, but once mass market devices evolve, they are sure to respond, not to mention low cost Asian manufacturers (see separate item). Large cellular chipmakers such as Texas Instruments and Freescale are moving from commissioned or niche products to the mainstream, so specialists will need to build up their customer bases, make their differentiation clear and boost their value for potential takeover, in order not to get trampled in the crush. At the other end of the scale, another major question hangs over the WiMAX semiconductor sector - having spent billions to create the market, how far will Intel cash in on its investment?
So far Intel's impact on sector development has been massive, but it seems largely to have created a market for its smaller competitors. "Intel is a nice competitor because it creates a market and then doesn't deliver the best product," said Sequans' CEO, Bernard Aboussouan. Many of the vendors that raced to announce support for its first generation Rosedale chip in the early days, gaining the marketing momentum that association with the giant brought, have now adopted alternative chip sources for some or all their products. In particular, they are inclined to look for an alternative for high end products. Most recently, we have seen Alcatel adopting non-Intel architectures, despite effusive support for the chip giant last year.
Much will depend on how successful Intel can be in the base station chip market, a sector to which it is unaccustomed. Many vendors are keen to source the same silicon for base stations and subscriber units - a key selling point for Sequans - and so Intel has been pushed into creating products here, rather than sticking only to its notebook chip heartland. Its launch of a base station baseband card and its new 802.16e laptop products will certainly up the stakes in the sector and put pressure on the smaller companies that have so far made most impact - Sequans, Runcom, Beceem, PicoChip and Wavesat, in particular. And there will be many more competitors, large and small, creating a glut that will lead inevitably to shake-out. There are fairly well established players that have yet to establish a real commercial base, such as software defined radio specialist TeleCIS; new entrant start-ups like Comsys, Alta and Atheros spin-off Amicus Wireless; and the majors like TI.
Currently, Beceem and Sequans are seen as the most prominent players at the CPE end, with Beceem attracting powerful partners for its developments in 802.16e and Sequans focusing on a common base for subscriber stations and base stations, and on a smooth migration from 802.16d through the ETG extended mode for the fixed standard, and on to 802.16e.
Also focused on the CPE end is Wavesat, the biggest cheerleader for prolonging the life of 802.16d in new formats such as laptop cards. The Canadian vendor's main differentiator lies in its creation of miniPCI formats and its alliances with a large number of low cost Taiwanese vendors.
For the base station, PicoChip has distinguished itself with a software defined architecture that can be applied to W-CDMA/HSxPA as well as WiMAX; a high performance product that has been adopted by Airspan, Marconi, Ericsson, Intel and others, and adapted for the burgeoning public safety market; and a strong focus on miniature femtocell access points for indoor coverage, where it has an important deal with leading pioneer ip.access.
In terms of early stage volume, Sequans and Runcom have shone on the base station front. The former has 18 customers, mainly among the traditional broadband wireless equipment makers - Airspan, Aperto, Redline, Axxcelera and Soma among them, and the French company also has high hopes of deals in Korea and China (also strong regions for PicoChip). Tier one equipment vendor contracts are harder to come by, especially for 802.16e, and the stringent requirements of these companies are hard for small chipmakers to meet - to the extent that Motorola has decided to design its own WiMAX chips, despite its spin-off of Freescale two years ago. But Runcom of Israel, a major WiMAX intellectual property holder, seemed to be losing commercial momentum until it signed up Nortel for its MIMO-enabled base station development, which will also bring in Korean attention through the Nortel-LG joint venture. And a large vendor's business may be large enough to keep several start-ups afloat - Alcatel, for instance, has adopted an open CPE policy that involves (at least until subscriber units are truly off-the-shelf) sourcing chips from Beceem, Sequans, Runcom and Intel.
The start-ups will also have a safe market among the WiMAX equipment specialists, at least for as long as these survive as independents. Aperto, for instance, which used Intel and Fujitsu for its 802.16d systems, has turned to the smaller Sequans for 802.16e. This highlights two factors that are important in the first phase of WiMAX chips, particularly in 802.16e. One, the start-ups are currently more technically advanced than their larger rivals, offering differentiation that will also be vital to smaller equipment makers if they are to stay afloat. So Sequans appealed to Aperto for its lead in low power, low cost silicon with promises of early support for MIMO, areas where it has a headstart on Intel. Two, the chip giants are likely increasingly to tailor their strategies around the requirements of top tier vendors, which may put specialist vendors at a disadvantage and push them towards smaller chipmakers to which their business will remain valuable.
The other early major into the market was, of course, Fujitsu, which is now looking to take advantage of its prompt entry by looking beyond its CPE/base station system-on-a-chip architecture to a full end-to-end system. In developing such a solution, its multifaceted network business and channels enable it to take this approach, which is denied even to Intel and certainly to start-ups. Fujitsu is uniting the 802.16 roadmaps of its Network Communications infrastructure arm and Microelectronics America chip division, and plans to create a unified line covering silicon, electronic devices, radio access networks, professional services and backhaul.
Eisuke Iwabuchi, president of the mobile system business unit of Fujitsu, said: “A key advantage of our solution is that it allows for easy installation and cost effective network design, while providing high speed connections for users and tight integration with all IP networks.”
“We own the entire ecosystem,” added Jim Orr, principal network architect with Fujitsu Network Communications, who points to the company's $2bn R&D budget and its experience in other radio access network technologies like W-CDMA as key advantages over most chip rivals. For the networks unit, it will gain certain benefits from controlling its own chip technology too - tailoring its silicon precisely to its system and customer needs and deriving efficiencies and cost advantages, lessons Motorola has also learned.
Chip highlights at WiMAX World:
• Beceem announced that ZTE and Taiwan's Accton would use its chips for their mobile WiMAX products, as well as powering a demonstration by Motorola. ZTE will use Beceem’s MS120 chipset and the two companies have a joint development relationship.
• Comsys Communications used WiMAX World to announce a convergence-focused architecture, with a multimode OFDMA baseband processor that enables service continuity between cellular networks and 802.16e. The company is targeting OEMs, and ODMs, PDA designers and SD card manufacturers. The ComMAX SoC is designed to support current and future 802.16e profiles including second wave certification, including MIMO. ComMAX incorporates a software-configurable modem core that addresses Mobile WiMAX, 3GPP LTE as well as future 4G standards evolutions.
• Sequans Communications unveiled its mobile WiMAX chip, SQN1110. Sequans said its new chip draws a mere 350mW of power and delivers throughput speeds of more than 10Mbps.
• Intel announced the Connection 2250, a system-on-chip supporting fixed and mobile operations, and claims to be the industry’s first dual-mode baseband chip, compliant with both WiMAX standards. It can be coupled with Intel’s discrete triband WiMAX radio to support all standard 802.16 frequencies. Intel also showed off its first base station chip product, the Intel NetStructure WiMAX Baseband Card.
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Cheers! TM |
