Lenovo Adopts Texas Instruments 'LoCosto' Single-Chip Platform for Low-Cost Handsets in China
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BEIJING, June 13  /PRNewswire/ -- Texas Instruments Incorporated  (TI) today announced the selection of its "LoCosto" single-chip platform for a new family of low-cost, multimedia-rich handsets from Lenovo Mobile, China's leading handset manufacturer.
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Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) is offering an innovative single-chip product for mobile phones and has hooked up with leading phone maker Nokia (NYSE: NOK) to provide devices using the chip for high-volume markets.
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(InfoWorld) - IBMÂ is pulling out the heavy artillery in its quest to build custom chips for both telephony backbone and handheld wireless devices, announcing a processor family built with silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology that is usually reserved for server processors. By borrowing SOI technology from its line of Power server chips -- includingÂ the top-shelf Power6Â -- IBM will achieve a 30 percent performance gain compared to chips using standard CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) technology, the company said Tuesday. And by building it on a scale of 45-nanometer feature sizes, IBM will achieve higher performance than comparable 65nm chips. IBM will launch this Cu-45HP (high performance) custom chip in early 2008, intended for manufacturers of switches and routers as well as cellphones and portable gaming systems. IBM will design a customized version of the ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) for each new client platform, said Bernard Meyerson, an IBM fellow and chief technology officer for IBM's Systems and Technology Group. The company already builds ASICs for the telephony market, but the new design will allow it to create more powerful designs in less time and at lower cost, he said. To boost power-efficiency, IBM is using 45-nm architecture embedded DRAM (dynamic RAM) instead of SRAM (static RAM) in the chip. Although DRAM has three to four times more memory density than SRAM, the company has never before used it for on-chip data storage because it is "pathetically slow," Meyerson said. IBM solved that problem with a recent advance that improves DRAM read/write data access speeds. Chips run faster and use less electricity when they use data stored on the processor itself instead of fetching that data from another location on the circuit board, he said. Once it launches the new chip, IBM expects to quickly reach full manufacturing capacity. Although the chip uses a new combination of technologies, IBM already builds processors with each of the components, such as the SOI-based processors it makes for gaming consoles including Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation 3, Microsoft's Xbox 360, and Nintendo's Wii. Despite the new features, IBM is announcing the Cu-45HP at a challenging time in the global chip market. Worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $19.9 billion in April, showing a decline from March as average selling prices continued to drop, according to a report released Monday by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). From January through April, sales were down by nearly 2 percent from the same period of 2006, the report said. The revenue slump occurred because prices have sunk faster than a modest rise in demand for consumer electronics. That consumer demand has bolstered the number of unit shipments in the market, but chip makers are collecting less money because of tumbling prices for many types of chips, including microprocessors, DRAMs and NAND flash, according to the SIA. Also on Tuesday, IBM announced new digital and analog semiconductors for mobile handsets and other wireless products. They include the SiGe BiCMOS 5PAe, a silicon-germanium-based analog product for making efficient power amplifiers in cell phones and WiMAX applications, the SiGe BiCMOS 6WL, an entry-level version of the company's existing technology for high-volume consumer electronics including cell phones and GPS (global positioning system) devices, and the CMOS 11LP, a product design to improve power efficiency in handset design. IBM is selling the 6WL design kits now, and plans to launch the other two products later in 2007. Â
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Chip-maker Texas Instruments Inc. has ridden the wireless wave since the dawn of the cellular age, with its sales and profits growing along with the popularity of games, cameras and other fancy mobile phone features that require more computing horsepower.
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The new NAND chip design will increase throughput up to 5X
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Japan's Kyocera is to supply China Telecom, the country's biggest fixed-line telephone operator, with data PC cards that will allow users of its cut-price wireless network to connect their computers to the internet.
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NXP will start shipping its single-chip  solution for ultra-low-cost phones to Samsung  from  the fourth quarter of this year, Chief Executive Frans van  Houten told Reuters on Friday.
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Chipmaker announces new chipset and reference design for consumer devices and PCs.
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Texas Instruments has developed chips to support mini projectors and high-def video on cell phones.
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Texas Instruments have just announced they will be building a single chip that will that will allow cell phones to receive digital television broadcasts over a wireless network.
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Powerful computer processor will be modified for mobile devices.
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Texas Instruments reported Thursday that it is developing a single chip for digital TV that will bring broadcast signals to cell phones.
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Chipmaker Broadcom has developed a way to integrate Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and FM reception capabilities onto a single chip, allowing manufacturers to produce devices with the functionality without sacrificing cost, size or battery life.
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SAN JOSE, Calif., June 19  /PRNewswire/ -- Xilinx, Inc. , announced today immediate availability of the industry's first single-channel LogiCORE(TM) FlexRay(TM) controller IP, optimized for the Xilinx(R) Automotive (XA) Spartan(TM)-3 generation devices.
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Texas Instruments unveiled a single chip solution for cell phones. Code-named &quot;Hollywood,&quot; the new chip integrates a tuner, OFDM demodulator and channel decoder processor.
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Advanced Micro Devices has unveiled a stripped-down, low-cost computing device as part of a plan to move into developing markets. The chip maker aims to provide 50 per cent of the world with internet and computing
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Dual-core processors to be considered single chip, company says.