Cities, Listen up!
All new phones have 3G or 4G technology.
Get your city ahead of technology, not behind it. This is the WiFi-enabled "killer application" your citizens will demand in a few short months!
When 3G meets Wi-Fi
Do this for your citizens!
If you have been reading technology news lately, you'll know it's an unusually busy summer for mobile operators. European and American Cellphone operators have been launching their much-delayed 3G services. Unfortunately, all of them have decided to price the service way beyond what a lot of people are willing to pay for slow 200 kbps connections. Is this a way to get customers?When the mobile operators paid billions for their 3G licenses, they did not foresee the rise of Wi-Fi, an alternative wireless network to carry data (and now voice) traffic. By the time they got around to launching 3G service, this is what the world has come to look like: there are thousands of hotspots and hotzones around the world, voice over IP has become very popular (whether it's Vonage or Skype) because of its convenience, ease of use and low price and handset operators are about to release Wi-Fi enabled mobile phones. This means that anyone with a Wi-Fi enabled device can do all that calling and data downloading via a cheap wireless broadband network that offers a lot more bandwidth. Although Wi-Fi isn't as ubiquitous as mobile phone connectivity (yet), it's getting to the point where it is not that hard to find and where waiting until you get within the range of a Wi-Fi signal is not inconvenient (especially considering the price difference between a 3G subscription and Wi-Fi).
In recent months I have noticed more cities deploying citywide Wi-Fi networks for public access. Hermosa Beach, CA is set to launch their free citywide wireless network in August. Spokane, WA has a large hotzone deployed in the downtown area. Chaska, Minnesota and Scottsburg, Indiana already deliver citywide wireless broadband service to their residents. A wireless ISP in Grand Haven, Michigan even offers mobile Wi-Fi throughout the city. Los Angeles is trialing a downtown hotzone with plans to expand it to other parts of the city. ISPs in densely populated Asian cities are testing citywide wireless mesh networks to carry voice and data traffic. Since most people make mobile phone calls within their city and to people who live in the same city, how attractive will mobile phone and 3G subscriptions be when you can make those calls over a Wi-Fi network everywhere in your community? Look for severe price cuts from Cell providers in voice and 3G subscriptions, saving your citizens money!
As the price of wireless broadband equipment drops and the different technologies (mesh and antenna) get getter, even more cities and regions (counties and provinces) are considering wide-area Wi-Fi networks. Pharr, TX has even concluded a successful trial of a county-wide network: they were able to deliver 20 Mpbs over a distance of 12.5 miles (20 km). Even an "InMotion" mobile police system was sucessfully demonstrated, increasing network speeds for normal police applications over cellphone cards by a factor exceeding 10. Pharr just celebrated its Centennial celebration; curious timing as it becomes the first full wireless deployment in the Rio Grande Valley. And, citizens with 3G phones? Their batteries are smiling!
Smartphones vs. Mobile Internet Devices
By Brad Smith
WirelessWeek
Intel’s new Atom strategy pits it against traditional smartphones
built on technology from ARM Holdings.
Two years ago, it may have seemed that Intel had given up on its hopes of making a big splash in wireless handsets. Not so.
Intel may have sold its former communications and application processor group and XScale technology to Marvel Technology in 2006, but it still had its eyes on the handset prize. It just wanted to do it a different way.
Nokia’s N810 uses ARM products...
Nokia’s N810 uses ARM products and will be
available later this year through Sprint’s Xohm.
The company is getting back into wireless devices, but coming at it from a different direction. It wants to enter the smartphone market from the top down, so to speak, by using the architecture it uses in its chips for laptops and desktops.
Intel’s new strategy, announced this year with a Centrino Atom family of chipsets, is further evidence of a blurring of the traditional computing and mobile phone worlds. There is one constant in wireless handsets, though, and that is power consumption. Battery technology hasn’t changed that much, so device manufacturers and semiconductor companies have to keep power consumption as low as possible.
THE UP-AND-COMER
The fastest-growing consumer electronics device market in the world for several years has been the cell phone. In 2007, there were about 1.12 billion mobile phones sold, which compares to the 271.2 million PCs and laptops sold last year.
Meanwhile, smartphone sales are growing faster than the overall cell phone market. Smartphones are generally defined as devices running an open, high-level operating system like Symbian, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm or RIM. ABI Research estimates smartphones comprised 10% of the total handset market in 2007 but will be nearly one-third of the market by 2013.
Today’s smartphones use a variety of silicon, starting with a central processing unit (CPU) but often with companion or integrated chips to run various functions on the phone. These include multimedia processors for audio and video, graphics, games, video encoders or decoders, memory, power management, connectivity and communications. There also can be multiple radios in smartphones to connect to a 3G network, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth devices, and soon WiMAX. Phones not only make phone calls, but receive and send e-mail, take photos and video, play music and browse the Internet.
The silicon in smartphones comes from a wide variety of companies, with some of the leaders including Freescale Semiconductors, Qualcomm, Samsung Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments (TI). Although these silicon vendors all compete, they also all have one thing in common – they are all licensees of chip architecture from ARM Limited, based in Cambridge, U.K. ARM doesn’t make chips itself, but licenses its architecture to others.
Products using the ARM architecture have been in mobile phones for about 10 years and in mobile devices longer than that. Apple was one of ARM’s early licensees, using its technology in the ill-fated Apple Newton and still uses it in the iPod and iPhone. Last year, there were about 3 billion ARM-based chips shipped in mobile phones worldwide, an average of 1.7 chips per phone. That’s because ARM’s designs are used in the central processors plus a variety of subsidiary chips.
Jim McGregor, research director and principal analyst for the In-Stat market research firm, says ARM’s central processor technology is in 90% or more of all mobile phones today. The main reason is that ARM’s technology was designed for low power consumption in mobile devices, he says.
Will Strauss, chief analyst for Forward Concepts, estimates 99% of the world’s mobile phones use ARM’s technology. ARM-based devices also are widespread in consumer electronics devices such as personal media players, Strauss says.
As smartphones add capabilities like video, ARM and its licensees have had to add functionality. Each added feature can require additional processing capabilities and demands on battery power, but McGregor says ARM and the chip companies have kept evolving to keep both at the lowest possible levels.
Click Image to ENLARGE
ARM Cortex-A9 single-core graphic.
Click on Image to ENLARGE
BATTLE LINES
There is a potential battle brewing between these two forces, as the world’s leading PC chip manufacturer, Intel, has started making processors for not only Ultra Mobile PCs but what it is calling the Mobile Internet Device (MID).
Gary Koerper, vice president of Platform Planning and Systems Architecture for Motorola’s handset unit, which is an ARM licensee, says Intel and ARM are coming at the same space from different worlds. Intel and its x86 architecture dominate the PC and Internet worlds, while ARM’s technology is optimized for mobile handsets.
“ARM is certainly coming from the smartphone space and trying to work into a mini-PC world, while Intel is coming down from the laptop,” he says. But the latest OMAP chipset from TI is capable of rendering high-definition video while also making voice calls, he says.
According to Koerper, Intel’s challenge is going to be to make a Windows mini-PC with good battery life, while ARM’s challenge will be to render Web pages on a browser as well as the Intel x86 architecture.
Nokia is among the handset manufacturers using ARM products that thinks it has the answer. Nokia just announced its N810 Internet Tablet WiMAX Edition, which will be sold for use on Sprint’s new Xohm wireless broadband network this year. The N810, which runs a Linux OS, has a Mozilla browser like the Firefox browser many people use on their PCs. The device uses a TI OMAP 2420 chipset, which uses an ARM11 core clocked at 400 MHz.
Bob Morris, ARM’s director of mobile computing, says the company has grown its technological skills from the original processor core to a large family that includes application processors, and multiple cores (the iPhone has a half-dozen) to baseband chips.
POWER EFFICIENCY
ARM licensees can use the various architectures or designs and then build their chips with their own interfaces, such as radio communications for 3G, Wi-Fi or WiMAX networks. Many of the components or accelerators that a silicon manufacturer adds are built on a single chip around the ARM core processor.
He says power management is the most important thing in a portable device, more important than how fast the core processor is. One example he gives is TI’s latest ARM-core chip, the OMAP 3440, which has a video accelerator capable of rendering high-definition video. TI’s design allows the video accelerator to run while the ARM chip is turned off to save power.
Power savings is the No. 1 reason ARM believes its approach is the best for mobile devices, although using accelerator chips also is more efficient, Morris says. He said video decoding is a good example. The task can be done using software on the main processor but it is more power-efficient to offload that task to a dedicated accelerator. The dedicator accelerator also does the decoding faster than it could be done on the core, he said, and uses less power.
Mobile Internet Devices (MID)
Mobile Internet Devices (MID) are an emerging product class.
SNAPDRAGONS & SCORPIONS
Even though ARM doesn’t see itself as a competitor to Intel, it has plans to move into MID-like devices – with 5- to 7-inch screens, full Internet browsers, wireless connectivity, multimedia capability and perhaps GPS. These are the Cortex A8 and Cortex A9 processors. ARM has licensed the A8 to about 10 companies, and Morris says there will be products in the market by the end of the year using the platform. Qualcomm is one of the Cortex A8 licensees and used it in its new Snapdragon chipset.
The Cortex A9, which Morris says will show up in devices in three to five years, has the ability to have four processor cores so that the amount of processing power can be scaled according to the application that is running.
Snapdragon is an example of how ARM’s licensees apply their “special sauce” to the ARM core. Qualcomm licenses only the instruction set for the ARM Cortex A8 for its Snapdragon chips and then builds its own chip based on the instruction set, according to Manjit Gill, director of product management for Qualcomm’s chip business unit. Qualcomm has been sampling the Snapdragon chips since November and expects them to be in handsets this year from such manufacturers as HTC and Samsung.
Around the core microprocessor in Snapdragon is a 600 MHz digital signal processor called the Scorpion to accelerate multimedia applications.
TI also uses the Cortex A8 in its latest smartphone chipsets, those that fall in the OMAP3000 family. TI’s OMAP3430, which has been sampling and will appear in devices late this year or early 2009, has four main components – the ARM Cortex A8, a 2D/3D graphics accelerator, a video and audio accelerator and an imaging signal processor of the camera. The video accelerator enables encoding and decoding of high-definition video (720p or 720 lines of progressive scan resolution) so the phone could be hooked up to a large-screen display or even a projector.
The OMAP3430 has a clock rate of up to 800 MHz, according to Avner Goren, director of strategic marketing in TI’s wireless terminal business unit. It also can be used with a variety of wireless modems, including WiMAX, Wi-Fi and 3G. TI also has a reference design and software that can be used by manufacturers, including a VGA touchscreen and TV output. It runs on a Linux platform, which analysts say will be the predominant operating system for these new smartphone/MIDs.
SILVERTHORNE’S ATOM
Intel, meanwhile, is coming into the same market with new chips marketed under the Centrino brand. The new chipsets, called Centrino Atom, are due to ship by June. Sharp announced the first device to use the chipset – the D4 model for the Japanese PHS (personal handy-phone system) operator Willcom. The D4 uses a 1.33 GHz Atom processor and runs Windows Vista Home Premium. It also has a Bluetooth headset that can be used to make voice calls. Sharp hasn’t announced any plans to market the device outside of Japan.
Other manufacturers planning to use the Atom include BenQ, Gigabyte, Lenovo, LG Electronics and Toshiba. Most if not all will be MIDs.
The two most important things about the Atom processor is that it is fully x86 compatible and that it is designed for low power consumption, according to Pankaj Kedia, director of global ecosystem programs for Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group. The x86 compatibility means it will use an Internet browser capable of rendering all Internet pages properly.
“What we are able to do is take the PC capability, performance and Internet access and shrink it into a device that you can carry with you all of the time,” he says. He gives as an example a personal navigation device that has Internet access through a wireless modem. The device can provide real-time traffic information, nearby points of interest based on your location and other location-based services. It might even be able to access video from YouTube.
“It has the mind of the PC under the hood, but the heart of a consumer electronics device,” Kedia says. The Atom processor can run at clock speeds up to 1.86 GHz.
The newest ARM processor, the Cortex A8, consumes less than 50 mW of power in active mode, compared to the active power range of 65 mW to 240mW for the five variants of the Intel Atom, according to information from the two companies.
Atom is not a dumbed-down Centrino laptop chip, but rather has been developed over the last four years specifically for the mobile device market, Kedia says.
“Silverthorne (the code name for Atom) was created for the mobile Internet device from the ground up,” he says. “It is a totally new product. Our engineers figured out that we can have up to 1.8 GHz performance in a device that has a 5-inch display and can deliver four to six hours of battery life in constant use.”
While Silverthorne/Atom cut power consumption by 10 times, the next generation Intel has on the design board – code-named Moorestown – will cut power use by another factor of 10, Kedia says. Moorestown, due out in 2009 or 2010, will still have the same performance capabilities. He says it will put Intel’s chips into smartphones.
The new Centrino Atom formally launched April 2 at an Intel Developers Forum. It includes the Atom processor, which is integrated with Intel’s controller hub. The controller, code-named Poulsbo, acts much like an accelerator for 3D graphics and other applications.
“The pure accelerator approach works well if you have a single-function device,” Kedia says. “It doesn’t work well in the age of the Internet. If you go to Facebook there are multiple things going on – video, photos, blogs, connections. The approach we are taking is having a high-performance processor that provides more than just a DSP approach.”
Analysts generally agree Intel has made significant strides with Centrino Atom, but it faces a couple of challenges.
In-Stat’s McGregor says Intel can offer WiMAX radios for the MIDs, but has no other wide-area wireless offering. Because WiMAX is just now rolling out, a WiMAX MID won’t be a mass-market device.
McGregor says a device manufacturer wanting to build a MID for a 3G network would have to buy a modem from another chip manufacturer like Qualcomm or TI. McGregor says those competitors could offer a complete package that includes the ARM-based chipset and 3G modem (Qualcomm does not yet have a WiMAX modem).
It is the next generation Intel has on the drawing board, the Moorestown chipset, that McGregor says will match or beat ARM-based power levels.
Of course, McGregor admits that ARM and its licensees won’t be standing still either. ARM has the advantage in terms of chipset volumes, its power management and its installed base. Intel has x86 compatibility and standards, with PC-like performance. As smartphones and computers become more alike, manufacturers will be making choices based on these strengths.
Smartphones vs. Mobile Internet Devices
By Brad Smith
WirelessWeek - May 01, 2008
Intel’s new Atom strategy pits it against traditional smartphones
built on technology from ARM Holdings.
Two years ago, it may have seemed that Intel had given up on its hopes of making a big splash in wireless handsets. Not so.
Intel may have sold its former communications and application processor group and XScale technology to Marvel Technology in 2006, but it still had its eyes on the handset prize. It just wanted to do it a different way.
Nokia’s N810 uses ARM products...
Nokia’s N810 uses ARM products and will be
available later this year through Sprint’s Xohm.
The company is getting back into wireless devices, but coming at it from a different direction. It wants to enter the smartphone market from the top down, so to speak, by using the architecture it uses in its chips for laptops and desktops.
Intel’s new strategy, announced this year with a Centrino Atom family of chipsets, is further evidence of a blurring of the traditional computing and mobile phone worlds. There is one constant in wireless handsets, though, and that is power consumption. Battery technology hasn’t changed that much, so device manufacturers and semiconductor companies have to keep power consumption as low as possible.
THE UP-AND-COMER
The fastest-growing consumer electronics device market in the world for several years has been the cell phone. In 2007, there were about 1.12 billion mobile phones sold, which compares to the 271.2 million PCs and laptops sold last year.
Meanwhile, smartphone sales are growing faster than the overall cell phone market. Smartphones are generally defined as devices running an open, high-level operating system like Symbian, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm or RIM. ABI Research estimates smartphones comprised 10% of the total handset market in 2007 but will be nearly one-third of the market by 2013.
Today’s smartphones use a variety of silicon, starting with a central processing unit (CPU) but often with companion or integrated chips to run various functions on the phone. These include multimedia processors for audio and video, graphics, games, video encoders or decoders, memory, power management, connectivity and communications. There also can be multiple radios in smartphones to connect to a 3G network, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth devices, and soon WiMAX. Phones not only make phone calls, but receive and send e-mail, take photos and video, play music and browse the Internet.
The silicon in smartphones comes from a wide variety of companies, with some of the leaders including Freescale Semiconductors, Qualcomm, Samsung Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments (TI). Although these silicon vendors all compete, they also all have one thing in common – they are all licensees of chip architecture from ARM Limited, based in Cambridge, U.K. ARM doesn’t make chips itself, but licenses its architecture to others.
Products using the ARM architecture have been in mobile phones for about 10 years and in mobile devices longer than that. Apple was one of ARM’s early licensees, using its technology in the ill-fated Apple Newton and still uses it in the iPod and iPhone. Last year, there were about 3 billion ARM-based chips shipped in mobile phones worldwide, an average of 1.7 chips per phone. That’s because ARM’s designs are used in the central processors plus a variety of subsidiary chips.
Jim McGregor, research director and principal analyst for the In-Stat market research firm, says ARM’s central processor technology is in 90% or more of all mobile phones today. The main reason is that ARM’s technology was designed for low power consumption in mobile devices, he says.
Will Strauss, chief analyst for Forward Concepts, estimates 99% of the world’s mobile phones use ARM’s technology. ARM-based devices also are widespread in consumer electronics devices such as personal media players, Strauss says.
As smartphones add capabilities like video, ARM and its licensees have had to add functionality. Each added feature can require additional processing capabilities and demands on battery power, but McGregor says ARM and the chip companies have kept evolving to keep both at the lowest possible levels.
BATTLE LINES
There is a potential battle brewing between these two forces, as the world’s leading PC chip manufacturer, Intel, has started making processors for not only Ultra Mobile PCs but what it is calling the Mobile Internet Device (MID).
Gary Koerper, vice president of Platform Planning and Systems Architecture for Motorola’s handset unit, which is an ARM licensee, says Intel and ARM are coming at the same space from different worlds. Intel and its x86 architecture dominate the PC and Internet worlds, while ARM’s technology is optimized for mobile handsets.
“ARM is certainly coming from the smartphone space and trying to work into a mini-PC world, while Intel is coming down from the laptop,” he says. But the latest OMAP chipset from TI is capable of rendering high-definition video while also making voice calls, he says.
According to Koerper, Intel’s challenge is going to be to make a Windows mini-PC with good battery life, while ARM’s challenge will be to render Web pages on a browser as well as the Intel x86 architecture.
Nokia is among the handset manufacturers using ARM products that thinks it has the answer. Nokia just announced its N810 Internet Tablet WiMAX Edition, which will be sold for use on Sprint’s new Xohm wireless broadband network this year. The N810, which runs a Linux OS, has a Mozilla browser like the Firefox browser many people use on their PCs. The device uses a TI OMAP 2420 chipset, which uses an ARM11 core clocked at 400 MHz.
Bob Morris, ARM’s director of mobile computing, says the company has grown its technological skills from the original processor core to a large family that includes application processors, and multiple cores (the iPhone has a half-dozen) to baseband chips.
POWER EFFICIENCY
ARM licensees can use the various architectures or designs and then build their chips with their own interfaces, such as radio communications for 3G, Wi-Fi or WiMAX networks. Many of the components or accelerators that a silicon manufacturer adds are built on a single chip around the ARM core processor.
He says power management is the most important thing in a portable device, more important than how fast the core processor is. One example he gives is TI’s latest ARM-core chip, the OMAP 3440, which has a video accelerator capable of rendering high-definition video. TI’s design allows the video accelerator to run while the ARM chip is turned off to save power.
Power savings is the No. 1 reason ARM believes its approach is the best for mobile devices, although using accelerator chips also is more efficient, Morris says. He said video decoding is a good example. The task can be done using software on the main processor but it is more power-efficient to offload that task to a dedicated accelerator. The dedicator accelerator also does the decoding faster than it could be done on the core, he said, and uses less power.
Mobile Internet Devices (MID)
Mobile Internet Devices (MID) are an emerging product class.
SNAPDRAGONS & SCORPIONS
Even though ARM doesn’t see itself as a competitor to Intel, it has plans to move into MID-like devices – with 5- to 7-inch screens, full Internet browsers, wireless connectivity, multimedia capability and perhaps GPS. These are the Cortex A8 and Cortex A9 processors. ARM has licensed the A8 to about 10 companies, and Morris says there will be products in the market by the end of the year using the platform. Qualcomm is one of the Cortex A8 licensees and used it in its new Snapdragon chipset.
The Cortex A9, which Morris says will show up in devices in three to five years, has the ability to have four processor cores so that the amount of processing power can be scaled according to the application that is running.
Snapdragon is an example of how ARM’s licensees apply their “special sauce” to the ARM core. Qualcomm licenses only the instruction set for the ARM Cortex A8 for its Snapdragon chips and then builds its own chip based on the instruction set, according to Manjit Gill, director of product management for Qualcomm’s chip business unit. Qualcomm has been sampling the Snapdragon chips since November and expects them to be in handsets this year from such manufacturers as HTC and Samsung.
Around the core microprocessor in Snapdragon is a 600 MHz digital signal processor called the Scorpion to accelerate multimedia applications.
TI also uses the Cortex A8 in its latest smartphone chipsets, those that fall in the OMAP3000 family. TI’s OMAP3430, which has been sampling and will appear in devices late this year or early 2009, has four main components – the ARM Cortex A8, a 2D/3D graphics accelerator, a video and audio accelerator and an imaging signal processor of the camera. The video accelerator enables encoding and decoding of high-definition video (720p or 720 lines of progressive scan resolution) so the phone could be hooked up to a large-screen display or even a projector.
The OMAP3430 has a clock rate of up to 800 MHz, according to Avner Goren, director of strategic marketing in TI’s wireless terminal business unit. It also can be used with a variety of wireless modems, including WiMAX, Wi-Fi and 3G. TI also has a reference design and software that can be used by manufacturers, including a VGA touchscreen and TV output. It runs on a Linux platform, which analysts say will be the predominant operating system for these new smartphone/MIDs.
SILVERTHORNE’S ATOM
Intel, meanwhile, is coming into the same market with new chips marketed under the Centrino brand. The new chipsets, called Centrino Atom, are due to ship by June. Sharp announced the first device to use the chipset – the D4 model for the Japanese PHS (personal handy-phone system) operator Willcom. The D4 uses a 1.33 GHz Atom processor and runs Windows Vista Home Premium. It also has a Bluetooth headset that can be used to make voice calls. Sharp hasn’t announced any plans to market the device outside of Japan.
Other manufacturers planning to use the Atom include BenQ, Gigabyte, Lenovo, LG Electronics and Toshiba. Most if not all will be MIDs.
The two most important things about the Atom processor is that it is fully x86 compatible and that it is designed for low power consumption, according to Pankaj Kedia, director of global ecosystem programs for Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group. The x86 compatibility means it will use an Internet browser capable of rendering all Internet pages properly.
“What we are able to do is take the PC capability, performance and Internet access and shrink it into a device that you can carry with you all of the time,” he says. He gives as an example a personal navigation device that has Internet access through a wireless modem. The device can provide real-time traffic information, nearby points of interest based on your location and other location-based services. It might even be able to access video from YouTube.
“It has the mind of the PC under the hood, but the heart of a consumer electronics device,” Kedia says. The Atom processor can run at clock speeds up to 1.86 GHz.
The newest ARM processor, the Cortex A8, consumes less than 50 mW of power in active mode, compared to the active power range of 65 mW to 240mW for the five variants of the Intel Atom, according to information from the two companies.
Atom is not a dumbed-down Centrino laptop chip, but rather has been developed over the last four years specifically for the mobile device market, Kedia says.
“Silverthorne (the code name for Atom) was created for the mobile Internet device from the ground up,” he says. “It is a totally new product. Our engineers figured out that we can have up to 1.8 GHz performance in a device that has a 5-inch display and can deliver four to six hours of battery life in constant use.”
While Silverthorne/Atom cut power consumption by 10 times, the next generation Intel has on the design board – code-named Moorestown – will cut power use by another factor of 10, Kedia says. Moorestown, due out in 2009 or 2010, will still have the same performance capabilities. He says it will put Intel’s chips into smartphones.
The new Centrino Atom formally launched April 2 at an Intel Developers Forum. It includes the Atom processor, which is integrated with Intel’s controller hub. The controller, code-named Poulsbo, acts much like an accelerator for 3D graphics and other applications.
“The pure accelerator approach works well if you have a single-function device,” Kedia says. “It doesn’t work well in the age of the Internet. If you go to Facebook there are multiple things going on – video, photos, blogs, connections. The approach we are taking is having a high-performance processor that provides more than just a DSP approach.”
Analysts generally agree Intel has made significant strides with Centrino Atom, but it faces a couple of challenges.
In-Stat’s McGregor says Intel can offer WiMAX radios for the MIDs, but has no other wide-area wireless offering. Because WiMAX is just now rolling out, a WiMAX MID won’t be a mass-market device.
McGregor says a device manufacturer wanting to build a MID for a 3G network would have to buy a modem from another chip manufacturer like Qualcomm or TI. McGregor says those competitors could offer a complete package that includes the ARM-based chipset and 3G modem (Qualcomm does not yet have a WiMAX modem).
It is the next generation Intel has on the drawing board, the Moorestown chipset, that McGregor says will match or beat ARM-based power levels.
Of course, McGregor admits that ARM and its licensees won’t be standing still either. ARM has the advantage in terms of chipset volumes, its power management and its installed base. Intel has x86 compatibility and standards, with PC-like performance. As smartphones and computers become more alike, manufacturers will be making choices based on these strengths.
Web Exclusive: A2DP - A Geek’s Luxury
By Evan Koblentz
WirelessWeek - May 01, 2008
Despite music’s popularity on wireless devices, stereo Bluetooth remains a geek’s luxury.
Six years after its development began, the Bluetooth SIG’s Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) is just beginning to find its way into wireless devices. The purpose of A2DP is to enable stereo output for wireless headphones. Yet all technologies have room for improvement, and A2DP’s weaknesses are highlighted by its exclusion from the most entertainment-centric, cutting-edge device of all – the Apple iPhone.
A2DP isn’t very popular even among tech geeks, but that is changing quickly. The realization generally goes like this: After spending hundreds of dollars for a high-end handset, a consumer takes home his new bounty, pairs it with a Bluetooth earpiece, and expects the same sound quality as from his MP3 player. It never arrives. The consumer hops onto Google, find a mobile blog or discussion forum, and discovers that he’s in A2DP limbo.
An Apple representative in Cupertino, Calif., declined to comment on A2DP, which according to most reports will not be part of the current iPhone wave of announcements focusing on a software development kit (SDK). Of course, a firmware upgrade could include A2DP at any time, along with other features conspicuously missing from the iPhone such as the basic ability to cut-and-paste. Indeed, Apple could add A2DP before this article reaches your mailbox, yet the question would still stand: Smartphones have been around since the 1990s, so why is stereo Bluetooth such a rare feature?
“A2DP is for all intents and purposes a geek’s luxury at this point. Really only in the last year has A2DP been in cell phones. It’s just not that obvious,” says Mark Pundsack, president of Wi-Gear, an accessory vendor in San Francisco.
Battery Drain
Most experts agree the major technical obstacle is battery life. Transmitting stereo audio wirelessly, regardless of the communications protocol, requires the transmitter to be switched on the entire time. On a smartphone, power is also constantly allocated for the telephony radio, for the screen or touchscreen, and for a heftier central processor than found in ordinary wireless phones. Including A2DP output could easily drain the talk time by 10% or more, Bluetooth SIG Executive Director Mike Foley says. There are also business reasons not to include it. High-end A2DP implementations often require an additional DSP chip, driving up the parts cost, and companies like Apple make several dollars for every third-party stereo adapter sold.
Foley calls out Apple in particular as the company which consumers expect to set the feature bar at a high level. “As hard to believe as it is, the iPhone does not enable stereo headphones … Supporting stereo for headphones, car stereos, portable speakers and home stereos is a simple extension,” he wrote, in a June 30, 2007, blog post, titled iDisappointment, on the Bluetooth SIG page – despite Apple’s membership in the organization.
“If the iPhone implements the standardized Bluetooth stereo profile, the device will work with headphones, cars, home stereos and portable speakers from any manufacturer. While this is great for the consumer, it isn’t as great for Apple’s bottom line. Apple may be under the impression that they can create an entire ecosystem of wireless peripherals for the iPhone and iPod in which they control by licensing the proprietary interface into the devices,” Foley continues. “I've asked Apple what the rationale was for not enabling more Bluetooth features in the iPhone, but as of yet, have not received a reply,” he says.
Interference
There has been industry speculation that interference between the telephone radio and the Bluetooth radio is another challenge to the rollout of A2DP 1.2, which is the newest version. Foley says that speculation is not true. “We probably have more Bluetooth devices per square foot in the country and we also run Wi-Fi and things like that, and we don’t see any issues,” he says, referring the SIG headquarters in Bellevue, Wash. “It’s been out there long enough. All these sorts of concerns don’t hold water any more,” he says.
A possible solution to the A2DP power problem is Wibree. Originally pushed by Nokia, Wibree became part of the Bluetooth portfolio last summer. It’s designed for ultra-low-power devices such as wristwatches and clock radios. That specification will be published in the first half of 2009, but handset makers would be in the minority of users for it, Foley says.
Sony and Qualcomm are among the companies that do include A2DP in headsets and phones. Motorola is another; its ROKR E8 is one such phone, but like the iPhone, it does not have 3G networking, that being a power hog as well.
“In general, we found that the A2DP standard has been very well-defined for some time now. The technical challenges themselves are really not that substantial for implementing the technology. Certainly there are things from vendor to vendor that impact things such as battery life and audio quality to some degree,” adds David Favreau, senior director of product management at Qualcomm.
The minor controversy could abruptly end because of the recent trend in hands-free driving laws, says Steve Bellamy, president of the Stanford Mac User Group. “People are still quite used to using their earbuds,” he says. “They’ll probably want to have better music capability. It’s purely a matter of what’s the most important thing to do first.”
City Wireless Consulting salutes Rio Grande Valley Wireless Initiative
Rio Grande Valley Wireless Initiative is the most impressive assortment of cities grouping together to complete the best solution we have seen. McAllen, Harlingen, Brownsville, Weslaco, Pharr, Rio Grande City and others are lining up. And, cities across the border are stepping up, also. Matamoros and Reynosa, Mexico are both in agreement with the roaming arrangement, as their networks were up long before the Texas networks.
Bobby Vassallo says, "With this co-op, cities will roam into and on to each other's networks, linking back to their home systems and solutions. This is a win-win for Homeland Security and FEMA and they should repay these cities in major fashion. The network arrangement will create, among other things, the finest emergency network ever conceived, covering the entire Rio Grande Valley. Hurricanes do blow in off the Gulf of Mexico, after all."
Services include remote traffic light controls, video surveillance, remote meter reading (electric, water, parking meter) as well as EMR, Police, Fire, and ambulance. Done collectively, vehicles from each city will be "on line" wherever they go in the valley. We are proud to consult Rio Grande Valley Wireless Initiative! Well done!