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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.' "
(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)
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.
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.
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
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.
... 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..
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."
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
The problem is that switching from one standard to another standard has a huge investment cost, and the profits don't actually make up for the initial investment for years (possibly a decade), when there is another standard.
Think of it like upgrading a computer. You never upgrade CPUs from 233 mhz to 266 mhz to 300 mhz to 350 and so on. You do wait as long as you can with what works (P133 to P2-350 in my case) to minimize investment cost.
I work at Motorola, and I can verify that people here are still working on Analog and PDC (a precursor to digital).
-Ted
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.
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.