Intel-Nokia Agreement Comments

With yesterday’s announcement of a strategic relationship between the computer chip giant and the cellphone chip, a number of business plans are likely to be revised.  It’s clear that Intel was moving increasingly to the world of mobile computing and that they need a 3G capability.  Apparently as a stopgap, Intel earlier entered into an agreement with EMP (now part of ST-Ericsson) to supply UMTS modules for use with Intel netbook platforms.  Now, Nokia has licensed its 3G IPR to Intel, implying that Intel will become a major supplier of UMTS modems...at least to the netbook, MID and notebook markets based on Atom platforms. The implication was made in the press conference that future development of LTE products was also in the collaboration agreement.

Last February, at the Mobile World Congress, Nokia announced (among other things) that it was licensing its 3G IPR to Broadcom.  The specific purpose of the Broadcom license according to my Nokia interviews was to ensure an additional UMTS supplier would be available to Nokia...obviously to counter the Qualcomm and ST-Ericsson sources that were already committed for future Nokia cellphones.  It’s unclear whether or not Intel will also become a 3G modem supplier to Nokia, or that Intel will stick to Intel-centric platforms.

One other thought is that Cellular “Communication Processors”, based on application processors on the modem die (or perhaps in the same multichip package) will become the norm for Smartphones.  Qualcomm has introduced its Snapdragon devices with UMTS and/or 1xEV-DO modems in the same package. Intel has to also consider mating its Atom-heritage chips (Moorestown is next) with a UMTS modem in either a multichip package or ultimately on the same die, and the Nokia IPR will allow them to implement either approach.  In the press conference, Nokia said that it would continue its engagements with the ARM players, but the Intel relationship would provide additional options for the company.

With the release of two of the hottest Smartphones on the planet within days of each other gives bragging rights to ARM, who’s top-of-the-line Cortex-A8 RISC core is in both the PalmPre (as TI’s OMAP3430) and iPhone 3GS (as Samsung’s S5PC100).  Both Cortex-A8 implementations employ video and graphics licensed from Imagination Technologies.  That’s probably why Intel has just bought a chunk of Imagination’s stock...following Apple’s significant stock holding the company.  Neither Intel nor Apple want Imagination’s key technology to “get into the wrong hands.”  Qualcomm’s Snapdragon implementation, which employs the Cortex-A8 instruction set architecture, was announced last February to be in Toshiba’s TG01 Smartphone, but that one has not hit the streets yet.  Since Qualcomm’s Snapdragon has employed graphics and video from the former ATI mobile graphics operation (first as a licensee and, most recently, as owner), it’s unlikely that they would be looking to employ Imagination’s IPR.

Infineon Also Scores

The iPhone 3GS also employs Infineon’s new SMARTi Power 3i HSPA RF Transceiver and baseband (based on Ceva’s DSP cores). This continues to keep Infineon as a major player in the 3G chip business and enhances their credibility.  We rank them #3 globally in total basebands (2G & 3G), following Qualcomm and TI (yes, Nokia’s still buying).

Application Processor Calibration

Clearly, Intel covets the $1.3 billion cellphone application processor market for its future versions of Atom, which is currently dominated by TI and its OMAP family followed by Samsung and Marvell. Actually Marvell shipped more apps processor units, while Samsung had slightly higher ASPs. You’ll remember that Marvell’s products are based on the ARM-heritage XScale solutions that were acquired from Intel. Now Intel would like to see Atom products in that earlier-vacated market space.  The chart is from our new “Cellular Handset & Chip Markets ‘09” report due for publication in the next couple of weeks.

Tensilica Comes Further out of the DSP Closet

As I mentioned in my earlier newsletters, Tensilica’s “dirty little secret” is that its processor IP is shipping in greater quantities as a DSP engine than as a RISC (The company now claims over 350 million cores shipped for DSP).  It began to emerge from the “DSP closet” at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last February, displaying a number of its customer DSP-based products.  On Monday of this week, Tensilica swung the closet door wide open, announcing its ConnX DSP product line. With its configurable instruction set, Tensilica has morphed its basic Xtensa RISC architecture to become an even more compelling DSP engine.

For LTE and 4G SoC designs, Tensilica’s has introduced the ConnX BBE (Baseband Engine). The ConnX BBE joins the proven quad-MAC Vectra DSP option, which is now re-branded as the ConnX Vectra Engine. The ConnX Vectra Engine has been used in many customer designs and is an integral part of the re-branded ConnX 545CK, the fastest licensable DSP core on the market, according to BDTI (16 18-bit MACs per cycle).  Tensilica has added over 200 baseband-specific instructions for compute-intensive functions. Automatic vectorization for ANSI C programs, and optimized instructions for fast complex FFT, FIR filters, and complex matrix operations are said to make the new architecture particularly suitable for low-cost base station designs, femtocell projects, digital media broadcast receivers and software-defined radio handsets.

Tensilica already has major customers – including Fujitsu, Panasonic and NEC – doing their own LTE cellphone baseband designs in this market.  My early suspicion was that this is a collaborative effort, and with the announcement last week that DoCoMo was making an investment in Tensilica, I believe that my suspicion is now confirmed.

Shameless Plug

The entire semiconductor market is now driven by DSP technology, since without DSP there would be no digital wireless, no multimedia, no VoIP and no Internet access of any kind.  Our newest in-depth market study covers the entire landscape of the integrated circuit market based on DSP technology, not just DSP chips.  “DSP Silicon Strategies ‘09” is the most extensive study on the planet of markets based on DSP technology. Many components that were once reported as “DSP chips” are no longer.  Rather, they are reported as systems on chip (SoC) in categories like ASICs or ASSPs. This is the only market study providing worldwide electronic equipment production forecasts (by region and by application market) and both IC and DSP content for each year through 2013.  Details are available at:  www.fwdconcepts.com/DSP’09

As always, I invite your comments. 

Will Strauss

President & Principal Analyst
wis@fwdconcepts.com
Forward Concepts
1575 W. University Dr. #111, Tempe AZ 85281, U.S.A.
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