Nikkei Electronics Asia -- February 2007
Tech Columns
Broadcom Targets Cell Phones

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Jan 26, 2007 15:37 Nikkei Electronics Asia
Even though the market for cell-phone processors has grown to more than one billion units per year, the same handful of companies continue to dominate it. Drawing on their long-standing relationships and software lock-ins with the leading handset makers, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Freescale, and a few others supply nearly all cell-phone processors. Several vendors, including Intel, have tried to break into this market, but all have failed.
Broadcom wants to become the exception to this rule. Over the past few years, the company has quietly built an extensive line of chips for cell phones and other mobile devices. These products are gaining design wins at top-tier handset makers, although shipments have been small so far. Can Broadcom succeed where others have failed? Let's take a look at its technology.

Baseband Technology
The most important component in every cell phone is the baseband processor, which controls how the phone connects to the cellular network. Broadcom offers baseband processors, called CellAirity, for both 2.75G networks (GSM/EDGE) and 3G networks (UMTS/WCDMA). The 3G chips support HSDPA, a high-speed download technology that is being deployed around the world. These chips support HSDPA at speeds of up to 7.6Mbps, matching industry leaders such as Qualcomm.
All CellAirity chips implement Broadcom's unique M-Stream technology, a signal-processing technique that the company says improves signal-to-noise ratio by 2 to 3dB. Although this improvement sounds small, it can significantly increase the number of active calls in a cell.
Current CellAirity designs use common third-party radio chips. Using an Athens-based engineering team acquired in 2005, Broadcom has developed its own radio chips and plans to announce these devices later this year. The initial product will support GSM/EDGE, followed by a 3G radio for UMTS and HSDPA. Unlike competing products, these devices are built in pure CMOS technology, reducing cost. More important, these CMOS radios can more easily be integrated into the baseband processor in future products.

Multimedia Technology
Cell phones today do far more than just make calls. To be competitive, vendors must support music, video, and connectivity functions that drive consumers to upgrade their phones. Broadcom uses its unique VideoCore engine, acquired through Alphamosaic in 2004, to efficiently deliver a range of multimedia functions.
VideoCore is a specialized architecture that includes a 16-way vector processor. This processor is highly optimized for video, decoding CIF or QVGA-quality video at 30fps using only 34mW of power, much less than video decoding on an ARM CPU. Unlike hard-wired decoders, VideoCore can be programmed for different Codecs (e.g. MPEG4 or H.263). It can even be used for 3D graphics, delivering about 10 times the performance of software-based graphics. These features have gained VideoCore a spot in Apple's video iPods.
Broadcom recently announced the BCM2820 application processor, which combines a VideoCore engine with an ARM11 CPU which operates at up to 300MHz. Whereas competitors offer application processors with CPUs that are more than twice as fast, the Broadcom chip delivers comparable performance at lower power by offloading video and graphics functions to the VideoCore engine.
Broadcom also introduced its first power-management chip, a key component in handsets. The company is already a leading supplier of Bluetooth chips and has modified its 802.11 chips to work in cell phones. Bluetooth has become popular in feature phones, and 802.11 is growing in popularity due to users making VoIP calls over Wi-Fi connections.

Toughest Challenge Yet
Broadcom has an impressive track record of taking over established markets. It became the leading vendor of Ethernet controllers during the shift to Gigabit Ethernet. Similarly, early deployment of 802.11g made the company number one in WLAN chips. Broadcom recently took the lead in DSL, mainly by integrating CPU, voice, and WLAN technology into its ADSL chips.
Now that it has developed the key components for a complete cell phone, Broadcom can use integration to reduce its customers' costs and simplify their designs. Cell phones represent Broadcom's toughest challenge yet, but the company has the history and technology to succeed where others have failed.

by Linley Gwennap