MWC: Intel samples new chip

Yesterday, at the World Mobile Congress, Intel announced a number of advancements to its mobile portfolio across a broad spectrum of silicon, software and connectivity, including the sampling of ‚Medfield,‚ the company’s 32nm phone chip.

The company also announced accelerated LTE platforms, a new MeeGo tablet user experience, the acquisition of Silicon Hive, and several new mobile investments and software development tools to aid in the delivery of Intel architecture-based device experiences across multiple operating systems.

As the lines between computing and communications continue to blur, this mobile momentum builds on and complements Intel’s growing capabilities in mobility.

‚The mobile Internet, with all of its complexity, presents tremendous opportunity and growth prospects for the industry at large,‚ said Anand Chandrasekher, Intel senior vice president and general manager of the company’s Ultra Mobility Group. ‚Through these efforts and others still to come, Intel is bringing the full weight of its resources, technology investment and the economics of Moore’s Law to drive down costs and power requirements for new markets.‚

Multi-Comms and Silicon

With the recent acquisition of Infineon AG’s Wireless Solution Business now closed, Intel outlined its strategy to deliver a smart, multi-communication architecture to address varying customer and service provider needs around the world, such as network capacity, application, device, cost and end-user experience with solutions from WiFi to LTE.

Intel announced that Intel Mobile Communications (IMC) will sample its first compact, low-power multi-mode (LTE/3G/2G), LTE solution in the second half of the year with broad market availability for devices in the second half of 2012. IMC is also now shipping what it claims to be the world’s smallest, fully integrated HSPA+ solution with 21 Mbps downlink and 11.5 Mbps uplink for small form factor devices, and announced a new platform supporting Dual-SIM Dual-Standby (DSDS) operation for the emerging Dual SIM market.

Expanding upon its silicon capabilities, the company announced that it is sampling its 32nm ‚Medfield‚ smart phone chip with customers. ‚Medfield‚ is scheduled for introduction this year and will extend the performance benefits of Intel architecture into a low-power solution specifically designed for the smart phone market segment.

Further building on these silicon capabilities, the company announced the acquisition of Silicon Hive, an Intel Capital portfolio company, which brings better still imaging and multimedia video processor technology, compilers and software tools to its growing Atom processor portfolio. The Silicon Hive capabilities will aid in the delivery of more differentiated Atom-processor based SoCs as multimedia and imaging grow in importance across the mobile smart device segments.

Intel also announced a new development by its researchers in radio frequency (RF) integration with new process technology that will make it possible to put three chips of a typical RF chipset on a single chip. Using the efficient transistors, Intel researchers are able to achieve lower power and faster radio components. By taking advantage of Moore’s Law, the research could mean better power, performance and reduced costs for future SoC designs.

Finally, efficient and flexible network access is essential to continue the evolution of the mobile Internet and enable network operators to deliver services faster and cost effectively expand network capacity with demand. Intel, KT and Samsung announced collaborative plans to demonstrate live-air LTE solutions using the Intel architecture-based Cloud Communications Center (CCC). The effort is said to be designed to expand data traffic capacity and network flexibility while reducing an operator’s total cost for network deployment and operation.

Software Advancements

Further scaling the development of flexible, open software platforms and applications for all mobile devices, Intel demonstrated a new MeeGo tablet user experience to be made available through the Intel AppUp Developer Program. The MeeGo tablet user experience features an object-oriented interface with panels to display content and contacts

In addition, Intel announced new MeeGo and AppUp software development tools and other programs to help developers port, write new applications, and tune and publish to the Intel AppUp center more quickly. The programs include developer access to software development platforms, new tools and other expansions such as a worldwide university program, an Application labs program and porting resources.

Building on Intel’s support of multiple operating systems, the company announced its intent to deliver the industry’s ‚fastest‚ performance on open source Android with Intel Atom processor-based devices running Gingerbread and Honeycomb, slated to come to market this year.