Contributors: Bob Wheeler, Jag Bolaria, Joseph Byrne, Michael Stanford In This Issue A Guide to Wireless Handset Processors, Third Edition is now available! Get up to speed on this rapidly changing market with our comprehensive report. For more information, access our web site. ST-NXP-EMP Merger Creates Industry's Longest Acronym A month after STMicroelectronics and NXP completed formation of the ST-NXP joint venture, Ericsson joined the party by contributing its Ericsson Mobile Platforms (EMP) operation and cash to the JV in return for a 50% share. ST will exercise its option to buy out NXP's share, leaving ST with the remaining 50%. EMP has a strong portfolio of UMTS basebands supporting leading-edge data rates and multimedia capabilities. Employing an unusual business model, EMP develops chip sets, software, and reference designs for its customers—most notably Sony-Ericsson—which source the chip sets from EMP manufacturing partners Texas Instruments and ST. Although ST-NXP already markets a UMTS baseband chip based on an NXP design, EMP has a much stronger market position, trailing only Qualcomm among third-party 3G designers. By joining with ST-NXP, EMP remedies its lack of connectivity chips and gains access to ST's Nomadik application processor. EMP brings skills in platform design and test, and the new ST-EMP entity will be able to offer complete platforms, matching the offerings of other leading baseband vendors. TI will be the hardest hit by this deal. EMP had already shifted some of its manufacturing to ST, and the new alliance suggests that TI will be locked out of any new EMP designs started after the merger is complete. We expect ST-EMP to abandon the unusual licensing model and instead sell baseband chips directly. This shift will cost TI the remainder of its Sony-Ericsson baseband business, which was more than $500 million as recently as 2006. ST-EMP starts life with enviable positions at four of the five major handset suppliers. Sony-Ericsson, which has been using both EMP and NXP basebands extensively, will be a key customer. Nokia, which in 2007 transferred a 3G-chip design group to ST, will be another major baseband customer once this group's chips are complete. Samsung is a major buyer of NXP-designed basebands, and LG has also used EMP's designs. The challenge for ST-EMP is to successfully merge three large and somewhat overlapping organizations into a coherent whole. —Joe Complete coverage of EMP appears in our new report A Guide to Wireless Handset Processors. Last week at IDF, Intel announced the CE3100, its first system-on-a-chip (SoC) design for consumer electronics. Specifically, the new processor (also known as Canmore) is designed for high-definition video equipment such as set-top boxes (STB), DVRs, HDTVs, and Blu-Ray DVD players. Although the CE3100 includes an 800MHz Pentium-M CPU and 256KB cache, Intel devoted 80% of the die to application-specific features, including powerful video, graphics, and audio engines. The CE3100 can decode two HD (1080i) video streams with deinterlacing, scaling, and trick-play capabilities. Embedded control processors offload the main CPU during video decoding. A security engine decodes protected content. Two audio DSPs support complex 7.1-channel audio. For sophisticated user interfaces, a 3D engine generates up to 13 million polygons per second. The chip integrates six video DACs for dual HDMI outputs plus a DDR2 DRAM controller, Gigabit Ethernet, USB, SATA (for DVRs with hard drives), and other useful interfaces. The CE3100 is part of Intel's new SoC strategy. Realizing that the embedded market is shifting to SoCs, Intel now has more than 15 SoC projects underway. These SoC products target various applications, including industrial, networking, consumer, and mobile. Dropping its long-time reliance on internal design, Intel is licensing IP in some cases. For example, the CE3100's audio engine is licensed from Tensilica and the graphics engine from Imagination. This change is helping Intel bring SoC products to market more quickly. STB designers have been frustrated with the limited performance of SoCs based on licensed CPUs running at 300MHz to 400MHz. The CE3100 offers 4x to 5x the performance of these competing products. At a $35 list price and nearly 10W (TDP), however, the chip is overkill for all but the highest-end STBs and DVRs. We see the CE3100 as a placeholder until Intel can introduce its next-generation product, code-named Sodaville. Due next year, Sodaville will use 45nm technology and the Atom CPU to greatly reduce cost and power dissipation. Although RISC vendors are increasing the performance of their CPUs, Canmore and Sodaville will create new opportunities for Intel in the HD video market. —Linley Additional coverage of Intel's processors appears in our recent report A Guide to High-Speed Embedded Processors. To receive Linley on CE via e-mail, you must register on our web site
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