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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: slacker711 who wrote (5472)	12/14/2000 2:12:46 PM
From: slacker711	Respond to of 197271

Hitachi HDR homepage...has a couple of references to a trial which they performed over the summer with KDDI. Hitachi seems to have really comitted to HDR. I think this might have been posted before...but when I bookmarked it, I dont think it had much information. There is more now.... tiis.hitachi.co.jp Slacker

To: slacker711 who wrote (5472)	12/14/2000 5:11:51 PM
From: EJhonsa	Respond to of 197271

OTOH...W-CDMA development has taken a different path. TXN has developed the OMAP (Open Multimedia Application Platform) architecture to allow it to market a W-CDMA solution to all of its customers. I believe that TXN needed the W-CDMA license since it is developing the software for the baseband chip. I'm fairly sure that OMAP doesn't differ much from TI's existing SoC architectures in that it's a general-purpose platform which handset manufacturers use for internal chipset development. In other words, I'd be very surprised to see OMAP-related sales resulting in royalties being paid to Qualcomm. Of course, TI's attempting to develop full-fledged ASIC solultions as well, as evidenced by their purchase of Dot Wireless, for which they obviously need a license. This move could prove to be a double-edged sword, however, if it alienates 3rd-party 3G ASIC developers interested in licensing OMAP. Interesting Techweb article, by the way. A couple of random thoughts: 1. TI mentions that they'll eventually be switching to ARM10 Thumb cores for OMAP. For those who don't know, the ARM10 (http://www.arm.com/sitearchitek/armtech.ns4/iwpList76/189E231BACC9FC8E8025697700389450?OpenDocument&style=CPUs) operates at 300 Mhz. Meanwhile, Intel's XScale (http://developer.intel.com/design/intelxscale/ixm.htm) will initially operate in the 300-400 Mhz. range. Two 300 Mhz.+ CPUs within a single phone, who would've thought five years ago... 2. Someone from Intel comments that TI really has no natural advantage against them when competing for customers. This is debatable, as, for companies like Nokia and Ericsson, the familiarity bred by years of developing chipsets via an existing platform might not be easily replaced. 3. Regarding the debate about a DSP-centric architecture vs. one that's CPU-centric, I think the two applications that could help the popularity of the latter are online games and enterprise software. Things like streaming media and voice recognition would naturally work well on DSPs, and considering how a number of complex PDA apps can run fairly well on the 206 Mhz. StrongARM cores used for the PocketPC, I'd be surprised if a 300 Mhz. ARM10 Thumb core doesn't prove to be up to the task. However, 3D games and scaled-down versions of apps from SAP, Siebel, i2, etc. could require more; but for now, given the robustness the ARM Thumb architecture continues to show, I'd still bet on DSP-centric architectures to dominate. Qualcomm, an ARM licensee, seems to agree. Here's one other Techweb piece on XScale vs. OMAP, which, oddly enough, was published on the same day, albeit in another Techweb publication: techweb.com Eric