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One Chip For All Your Wireless Needs
shaar writes "Motorola has introduced another neat wireless chip. It seems this new chip would get us all closer to the all-in-one gadget no matter where you are. From the press release blurb:
'The chip conforms to the Code-Division Multiple Access (CDMA), Global System for
Mobile Communications (GSM), Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (iDEN), and
Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) standards and also supports satellite-based
products.' "
woop-de-frickin' doo.
No comments are appearing on my screen. Who is to blame, Slashdot or Internet Exploder?
We need more global standards. Sure, this is aimed at mobile phones, something like the Sprint PCS thing for everyone in the wrld, but think of the other uses to. Hell, maybe eventually itll lead to a single, superior OS. Course, Im dreaming, like I usually do. MOMMY, DONT MAKE ME GO IN THE PIT MOMMY, I LOVE YOU MOMMY!
Your Big Brother comment is a cliche but I really like your sig!
Take it easy there chief... dont' be so hard on the wireless industry. We are just trying to get enough POPS to drive our RPU into the stratosphere. What we really need is to take the TAP protocol and fuse it into the WTCP protocol with WAP extensions that allow MAPI compliant phones to send email via TDMA. All of this will be a reality with the new YABA-DABA-DO protocol, due out in Q1 2000.
DSP56690 sounds like the military version of
a soft radio migrated to civilian application.
Instead of going through several IFs to get to
the baseband, a DSP (hence the name?) does all
that in software, plus the decoding of the
modulation type, phy-level FEC, encryption, etc.
Soft radios are amazing technology, one receiver
fits all. New GSM standard? Flash update please
download from... New digital radio transmission
standard? MP5? Different frequency? No problem.
a beowulf cluster of those things?
You are talking two different things. CDMA and TDMA are _air_ interfaces and quite small part of the phone. GSM is the whole protocol family from phone to the network elements. GSM as a protocol is quite nice, altough quite big (about 7000 pages ). GSM as a protocol is much more widely adopted than the IS95 used in the CDMA phones. :)
Also the CDMA which is going to be used in the 3G phones is not the same implementation as in the current IS95 phones and propably the biggest underlying protocol will be GSM still because GSM is the biggest protocol nowadays.
The 3G standard makes it possible to combine many different standards to make it possible to include more easily GSM and USA stanrad to the phone
CDMA (lets talk about air interfaces) has its own problems. For example multipath propagation is quite troublesome to CDMA and easier to handle in TDMA. Also the spectrum efficiency was overestimated quite much in the earlier CDMA calculations. In real world situations the CDMA performs little better than TDMA but not that much better (1.8 times better is one figure presented).
Also the RF and demodulation circuitry is much more complex in CDMA phone and consumes more power. Especially at the base station side, the CDMA detection chips have to be quite complex to minimize erraneous bit detections caused by different sender distances and amplitudes. Neural networks as optimators have shown quite good results in this area .
Does this sound winmodem-ey to you guys?
i realize we're getting into borderline religion here, but speaking from personal experience using a variety of carrier's equipment, ranging from GSM first, TDMA second, iDEN third, and CDMA fourth, i feel reasonably qualified to discuss this:
:)
1) i have absolutely no confidence in the ability for either iDEN or CDMA implementations *i* have used to improve what matters to the consumers: the combination of CALL QUALITY and RELIABILITY. it absolutely sucks sucks sucks in each and every carriers' implementations i tried. (this is almost certainly due to the implementation, not the technology)
2) i hadn't given TDMA too much of a thorough workout, but since GSM and it are basically identical in the physical signalling, i found it to be of equivalent quality.
3) GSM had, in all cases *i* tried, equivalent call quality (when things were good) but SIGNIFICANLY better reliability (when things were degrading).
i found GSM on 1.9 gigaherz to be at least 5 times as reliable as CDMA over typical frequencies in use in the USA (8xx Mhz?).
take it for what it's worth, but i still will argue that CDMA may be technologically superior, but if it's on a frequency range that is already inundated with splattered noise, it's not going to matter much. you can't overcome physics
the devil is in the details of the implementation....
for what it's worth....
my 0.02
Also the power handling is the most complex part of the CDMA system especially in big cities because the feedback loop can't be controlled fast enough to prevent oscilations. The multipath problem is connected to the power control problem because you can have same signal with different stengths arriving and after few seconds many of the the multipath signals dissapear and the "right" signal might be weaker than expected etc.
CDMA is worse for medium speed data, than GPRS, based upon GSM. GSM also has more features, and the ability to rollout thos features than CDMA (due to crappy IS-41 core networks). The 3G standards (3GPP anyway) are both cDMA and TDMA..
Multipath propagation is easy in CDMA. and it adds to the receiver gain, unlike GSM, where it's an interferer. CDMA is about 7X amps in capacity. Full-rate GSM (same speech quality as CDMA) is about 1.5x amps CDMA consumes less power in the handset..
I am looking forward to Ericsson's Bluetooth. www.bluetooth.com
(with apologies to Tolkein and fans)
One chip to rule them all.
One chip to find them.
One chip to reach us all
and in the darkness call us,
In the land of Motorolla where travelling no longer gets you away from work.
-Peter
== Just my opinion(s)
What if the other person lives in another city or country?
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
Hopefully this will ease worldwide usage of cellular phones. I know I for one felt really stupid while in Morroco, to see the locals using the Sony Zuma - which happens to be the digital phone that I use. However my phone wouldn't work on their GSM network because I had a CDMA phone. I kept thinking "it's the same phone, i swear."
I won't get too excited just yet though. I've seen similar technologies out of Erricson that combine competing technologies. For one those phones have been noticeably large, two, you have to buy cell service from two companies (which means monthly payments for both) and three, the phone will not switch between technologies on the fly when a signal is being dropped.
Joseph Elwell.
USB is nicer than serial for uploading your address book, and Bluetooth modules will likely have USB interfaces, so if you are building a phone that incorporates Bluetooth, you will use USB (if it has both USB host and USB peripheral interfaces, if it is peripheral only, you are SOL for high-speed Bluetooth).
I wrote parts of this stuff
Here is Motorola's link Press Release, it's a bit more informative, question is...why the USB module?
According to an interview with a Nokia engineer I read last year, multiple standards are much easier to build into small phones than multiple frequencies. So a world phone is not necessarily enabled by CDMA/TDMA/GSM/iDEN compatibility. Besides, TDMA, GSM, and iDEN are essentially the same thing anyways. So the problem is that the US runs digital on 1900 mHZ usually, and the rest of the world uses 900/1800.
You put one of these over into some piece of hardware and you want to head out with it... do you need to select what it is that you want to use from the chip? Does it have any automatic failover or does it choose the cheapest route available to your intended partner? Putting more choices into the hardware is fine but the common person isn't going to be able to make the proper selection when multiple/many are available. People only want the end result and a single button on the front that says "make it so" or "do what I mean".
I used to work at Motorola, and we'd have one internal memo every week that talked about a "new innovation" that would get us back into profitability.
Sadly, none of those memos said "we're firing all the pointy-haired idiots who are running this company into the ground," so they continued to bleed money like Amazon.com; only difference being that a multi-billion-dollar chip company isn't considered successful if it's capable of losing 86 million in three months.
Anyway, we all knew they were doomed, and bailed out, the split second they started talking about the secret "blackbird" set-top-box project. It was at the same time as the announcement that they weren't doing 401k matching for the next year, AND that executives were tightening the belt, and wouldn't be getting their two-year-old Lincolns replaced.
Oh, I'm terribly sorry, I've degenerated from ranting about Moto inventing neat products that are going to be miserable failurs because of mismanagement to simply ranting about mismanagement. Oopsie.
You sit at the dirty end of a particle accelerator all day, and you worry about cancer from a dinky radio?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I say it's just one step closer to having the old shoe phone handy. Really though, I don't have or use Cellular phones, but don't they already have phones that can browse the web and get your email?
--Jason Bell
--Jason Bell
Faster than the light of speed!
--
P.S. Why do you need to send email from a cell phone? Isn't it easier to actually PHONE the person?
--
You call them to ask why they haven't responded to your email yet. (what do you mean you didn't get it? You're holding it in your hand!!)
A chip like this, assuming that it will be properly supported and utilized in quality phones, is wonderful. The number of varying standards out there at the moment has simply gotten out of control. The problem, however, comes about when someone wants a chip that will do EVERYTHING, an Ubergadget if you well. In theory this might seem acceptable, but it would only lead to inferior devices. Take the example of integrated tv/vcr units. More often than not you get a poor quality television with a small viewing area and a low-grade vcr bundled in the same package for about the same price as higher quality individual units. Add to this the problems if one breaks down (harking back to the days of integrated keyboards and monitors being standard) and the device in question has lost most of its usefulness.
This trend IS out there. The PDQ smartphone (the one that integrates a PalmOS pocket computer and a cellular phone) is surfacing as one of the many early concepts on gadget integration. So long as the products remain of high quality and design we have little to fear, but should these catch on, or some of the less scrupulous types decide to market only integrated devices we may see it in other areas of computer and gagetry.
Just a caution...
I agree that multi-function chips are great for integrated devices like the Palms, but comparing them with PIIIs is pushing it. Putting all the functionality on a single chip does reduce complexity, but it also reduces flexibility. A PIII (or Athlon or PowerPC) can form the basis of a general purpose PC.
Both multi-function chips and more conventional CPUs have their place.
This does not mean that anyphone with this chip will support all standards. It certainly makes this easier but that's not the main goal. The main goal is to have the same chip in all of the phones so Motorola engineers don't have to mess with 2 different chips if they're working on CDMA and TDMA. It just provides some continuity to their phones and saves them money by not having to update chips for each of the standards.
By the way, I've actually seen one of these things...yeah, I'm cool.
hey.. /. is more or less designed to look ok under Lynx.
if it can telnet, it can run Lynx.
meaning you can read slashdot on a TI-8X calculator since there is a terminal emulation program for it..
if the phone makers are not considerate enough to supply a telnet client, or if you don't have any shells to connect to, there is always the quick method: you call a friend on the telephone, then ask them to access slashdot on their second phone line and read the stories out loud to you over the phone, and then you crash into a S.U.V. at 70 MPH and die because you were too busy using your cell phone to pay attention to your driving, you stupid insconsiderate fzckhead.
The big question in my mind is, can it run MAME?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
One chip to bind them,
:)
One chip to rule them...
oh, wait...sorry.
Jeff
Yes, and now this super chip will put many many types of cancer into your brain!
Why are you reading this?
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
jdube is who
They give you cancer, I swear it!!!!
Why are you reading this?
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
jdube is who
Most people don't have a need for phones that speak multiple protocols. Some friends of mine that travel between the US and Europe frequently need them and they're very expensive when you can get your hands on them. This could reduce the the cost of those devices, but I still wonder about the NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome that led to conflicting wireless (and for that matter analog and digital TV) standards.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
So I go to read the press release blurb on Yahoo...what gives? The info was non-specific and contained no links to Motorola's website. Anyone got more info?
If taken at face value, this could be a boon to 2-way paging devices or 'sports boxes' that deliver info to rabid sports fans anywhere/everwhere/all the time.
If your
See more about:
Ass Chips
---
The statement below is true.
Sure it's exciting, but can you put one in a cellphone? That sounds like a great set-top-box chip, but probably not a cellphone chip.
Phones have other constraints, like power consumption and cost, that aren't issues in bigger devices.
If the chip goes through your battery in a few minutes, then it's not a useful portable device.
If the chip costs more than the rest of the phone's components combined, you've got a lot of incentive to use a cheaper chip!
If the chip's features require megabytes of RAM & ROM to use them all, and you can make a less exotic phone that uses a fraction of the RAM & ROM, well, you see the point...
If only it were that simple :)
The ITU is pushing for a WCDMA air interface with GSM-derived protocol (IMT-2000). Their timetable is a year or two later than the US's TIA organization, which is working on 3G standards that will have IS95-like protocol (IS-2000).
However, there are carriers in the U.S. who use the 1900MHz version of GSM today, and some of them will want an upgrade path compatible with their GSM-based networking. So most likely there will be many standards used by different carriers in the U.S.
There may be some problems making the RF side of a 'world phone' work properly, but it's been done. A good many European GSM phones now operate on both 900 MHz and 1800 MHz bands.
Motorola currently offer a 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz tri-band phone, the L7089, but it's still GSM only. Support for other modes would improve coverage in countries like the US and Canada, where other standards are in use.
Whether this chip actually gets *used* in such a phone is another matter. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
The chip really has two cores, one DSP and one MCORE.
See the EE Times story for a little more in-depth information.
The main idea here is that the same chip can be used a number of phones or other devices, making them cheaper and easier (or at least faster) to design. You will start to see more and more multi-core chips come out as this Systems On a Chip (SOC) stuff picks up.
*Rant mode on*
GAAAAHHHH.
I hate when those maketing ho-hums always has to cram in buzz words in every press release. They absolutley have to point out that this chip will enable people to surf the web just because it is a phone chip, no doubt a good one but still just a phone chip.
*Rant mode off*
What?!? CDMA systems use rake receivers to correlate the multipath signals. CDMA can use multipath to get a *better* signal - the same concept is behind the "soft handoff" feature of CDMA - instead of a hard switch from one cell to another, you can use both of them during the transition.
As far as the efficiency overstatement, yes, that was oversimplified, but an 80% improvement is still nothing to sneeze at, and that's the lowest credible estimate I've seen.
CDMA spread/despread and demodulation is pretty simple, actually. It's the power control that really bites you with complexity. The power control is what ensures that everybody's signal arrives at the cell at the same power level - without that the whole system would fall apart.
say "bye" to privacy and "hello" to Big Brother, again.
--
-- ken williams
a phone with this chip can support all these standards? OW, will I be able to switch from a TDMA to CDMA provider and back again? Or does it just simplify matters for the phone manufacturers?
There's ALOT of software involved with supporting just one standard. To support three different standards, you'd need three times the software, in addition to the standard detection and switching software.
Basically this chips allows for a common platform for all of (M)'s subscriber units. So you'll see cheaper phones.
Well for one thing GSM operates at 900Mhz which is the same frequency of cordless phones in the US. That and the US got embroiled in a standards war, tried to make a new standard that was backwards compatable, and got embroiled in yet another standards war. Meanwhile, the Europeans got together and decided to design a digital system the Right way from the start.
Rent "The Presidents Analyst". Mid '60's film
with James Coburn.
Predicts the ultimate cell phone.
This could be great for us consumers. Currently I have a Sprint PCS phone. I'm pretty happy with Sprint right now, but what if I decide in six months to switch to AT&T? Right now I have to buy a new phone.
Maybe with this Motorola chip I will be able to use the same phone with a variety of providers. This will make it easier for me to switch and will increase price and service competition.
... they want to make money.
There are a number of hurdles that the wireless industry needs to get over before wireless communication can make significant progress.
1) protocols. We need a SINGLE global WIRELESS VOICE protocol. CDMA is technically superior for MANY reasons, but for political reasons, there is a profusion of GSM and TDMA all over the world. CDMA makes the best use of wireless bandwidth, and that's significant. Also, we need WAP to take off BIG. (Micros~1 still isn't backing Bluetooth, either)
2) standardized cellular frequencies. The world is really in trouble when it comes to spectrum allocation. Go into 5 or 6 countries and look at what frequencies are public, owned by the military, government, reserved, etc.. and you'll see what I mean. -- we need a powerful global group to (re)allocate global frequencies
3) price - The cost for cellular calls is still artificially high from the days when all the phone companies lost TONS of money from people who pirated analog cellphone identies with scanners and phone reprogrammers. The prices haven't come down yet...
4) subscription plans. C'mon is anybody *NOT* confused by all the stupd options plans? It's like all the tax attorneys got hired by the cellular providers..
Yeah - maybe I can get a Sony AIBO to follow me around and conform to all the various wireless standards - that way, I can just talk to my dog instead of using a phone. Or the dog can carry the phone for me... or maybe (sound of mind snapping)
More than ever, man's best friend (now with less clean up!) 8^)
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I am under the impression, that besides protocol compatibility, a World Phone, would also need to be able to send/receive on all the different frequencies used around the world (900 MHz, 1800 Mhz, 1900 MHz). Is that that easy to do? For example, the Ericsson euro-GSM phones (for 900 MHz) have considerably smaller antennas than their American (1900 MHz) counterparts.
Any DSP people out there to confirm/shoot down this?
this is rather silly. I mean if I wanted integrated peripherals I would have bought an iToilet thingy...
This space for sale
that a phone with this chip can support all these standards? IOW, will I be able to switch from a TDMA to CDMA provider and back again? Or does it just simplify matters for the phone manufacturers? The press release leaves me somewhat confused on this point. Having that ability would be really sweet.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
Slashdot has icons for all kinds of companies, big and small, but not for Motorola. This would have been a fine example where I'd have loved to see a shiny Circle-M at the top of the screen. At least I didn't see the fsck'n APPLE logo like I usually do with most Motorola-centric PowerPC stories. I asked once and got no response, but say, how about a Moto section/icon, folks?
i'm not hugely knowledgable about wireless stuff, but from what i've read GSM makes it seem a lot more elegant than the rest. maybe they should be calling it GEFTUSM (global except for the US system for mobile communications). the acronym is propbably just a bit too long.
As far as I can see, this is not a real amazing breakthrough, but it will mean mobile phones that work better across different transmissions standards (e.g., Europe vs. America), and could eventually be used in a Palm Pilot or Nokia Communicator (or even Psion 5 or 7) devices to make them more capable.
It uses a DSP56690 chip (one of this series of processors was used in the Atari Falcon I am pretty certain!) which supports all mobile phone standards, so it can be used worldwide.
So expect to see this embedded in a DragonBall processor sometime next year, maybe...
And why have all the messages disappeared?
Shurely shome bugsh or shumething? Maybe because Slashdot reckons this was posted at 6.20PM (UK) and it is only 6.10PM (UK)?
Maybe a response to all the no-news articles posted here recently.... Slashdot committed suicide out of shame...
Maybe I should post this anonymously now :-)
What implications will this have? None?
EC
EverCode
I don't understand what's really so exciting about this. Unless they have managed to put some of the RF circuitry needed to support all different standards, this is not a technological break through. Most digital cell phones have a DSP for baseband processing, encoding, decoding and stuff, and a general purpose processor for the MMU (man-machine interface). The most recent ones usually employ combo chips which combine the processor and DSP.
The rest of the phone is strictly analog, and deals with the radio reception/transmission. This part has lots of analog circuitry, SAW filters, etc. Other than the software, this is where the standards differ. The digital part is always programmable, unless the standard mandates special purpose hardware for some reason. (The crippled A5 encryption algorithm in GSM phones might be specified to be implemented in hardware strictly, but I'm not so sure about that.)
If they managed to put most radio functionality for all standards on a single chip, my hat's off to Motorola. Otherwise, it sounds like they have just imporved one of their DSPs and announced it as "the mother of all cell phone chips" with great fanfare.
It is only in the US that people suffer because of incompatible phone standards. Go to Europe, and you can travel everywhere with your GSM phone, and it will work flawlessly in every country. This problem is a non-issue in Europe.
Zigbee Central: A Zigbee weblog
There are much, much more exciting new chips on the market. You want cheaper network appliances running Linux? Check out National Geode SC1400, a single chip combining:
I think this is the kind of chip to discuss on Slashdot, not this wimpy glorified DSP. Slap one of these, a cheap hard disk, and some memory, and you've got a full PC compatible settop/network computer you can use with your TV.
Now this is an exciting chip if I have ever seen one.
Zigbee Central: A Zigbee weblog
It means that whatever the local standard, the phone can connect.
it dosen't seem so. according to the article, this chip is to be used by manufacturers to implement their own standards. it dosen't seem that any manufacturers have said that they will actually support multiple protocols in their phones.
while it may be that this will eventually happen, this piece of news is only the first step toward that end.
cheers,
sh_
Interested in learning Chinese or Japanese? check out Chinese/Japanese-English Dictiona
but when you get down to it, can you read /. with one?
if not why bother
Need a Catering Connection
Furthur, this only deals with demodulating the signal once it has been received. You still need the RF front-end to do:
and that ain't easy.
Then, you have to decode the protocol (that's where the part comes in) plus any higher level signalling (usually, you'd used another microcontroller for this).
This isn't a one-chip phone by any means. A multiprotocol phone is going to be a mother of a beast to code.
Now, I work in the comms field, designing test equipment that uses the Motorola 56300 family of DSPs, and I am less than impressed. I hope this new chip fixes the bugs in the chip, the stupid DMA controller (MOTO DSP GUYS: ever hear of scatter/gather?), the brain-dead instruction set (who ever heard of a DSP without a saturating add instruction!) and oddball word length (let's move from 24 bits to 32, shall we?), and small stack size. Not to mention that this DSP is a fixed point only DSP, no floating point on board.
If anyone out there has a good link to this chip's data sheet (I looked on Moto's site, no dice), please post it.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Having to buy another phone is part of the lockin (lockout?) in switching Mobile phone companies in North America. The other problem is having to change your phone number.
Even if you have this "super all-in-one chip". all the mobile companies will just SP-lock them (as some do now) so that you can only use it on their network.
From the various articles I have read (see posts by other people with links), it is relatively clear that this chip does not allow on the fly transition from one standard to another. Nor will your service provider probably allow this type of switching any time soon either.
The entire point behind the multiple protocol chip is to make design and manufacturing cheaper and easier for cellular phone makers. It seems that it would be possible to switch between different protocols within the same phone by simply using a different ROM. A company that manufactured cellular phones could make the same phone across the board, then, near the end of the process, either flash the ROM for European standards, or for US standards.
"Anyone who can't laugh at himself is not taking life seriously enough." - Larry Wall
Am I the only who noticed that the article contained a total of 13 acronyms? WTF do all these TLAs and ETLAs mean? Is this to make the chip YABA-compliant? IANAEngineer so I have no clue why there have to be 4 "standards".
P.S. Why do you need to send email from a cell phone? Isn't it easier to actually PHONE the person?
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
For the naysayers who ask "Why do we need this?" I would like to point out, simply, that anyplace that a connection needs to be made on a circuit board is a potential point of failure as well as a potential trap and source for RFI. By placing more functionality on the chip itself, these problems are less likely to occur. Also, faster data access is possible (this is why on-chip cache is such a good idea).
Personally, I am quite excited by this new development and I see this trend in multi-function chips which offer nearly complete systems in one small package a better use of resources than the massive PIII which still needs significant support chips to integrate into anything. Also, what is the usual result with more powerful (=CPU speed/MIPS) chips being released? Software bloat. This trend in truly increased functionality steers away from that and instead allows designers to focus on product innovation.
All I herd was a chip that does a CDMA66?GSM connects by iDEN, to the eDIN website (aka eSUPPER) and has a TDMA33 Disk? And something about running Multiple copies of Access to divide up the code, and send it by the digital netork. All this while divideing your time between the multiple access programs running. Think I have it right.
http://www.freebsd.org
It means that whatever the local standard, the phone can connect. Previously the 4 incompatible standards in the US have been a big stumbling block to uptake.
Intercompatibility also makes it easier for networks to upgrade to newer, more efficient standards; and for the mega-networks to take over and integrate small independent local networks using different technology. TDMA/GSM interoperability is a big deal in the ATT/BT cooperation.
This isn't really a new chip, but Mot finally decided to use one DSP and one hardware platform for all their phones. Even today almost all of the processing on the phone is done in a DSP. Only the first level of processing after the reception of the signal is done analog. Everying that makes all the standards different is done in software on the DSP.
Basiclly Motorola is trying to combat the recent TI DSP adds.
Finally the embeded guys are learning that software is much cheaper to do than hardware.
I mean, while the idea of having a Vader sized portal-to-the-world is cool and all, I wonder how useful a monolithic design actually will end up being.
I certainly don't use my web browser for email or news. And not just because of the rampant security issues. IE and NS are okay for browsing, but their utility for other services sucks rocks. Why should I expect better from a R/O functionality set?
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl