Broadcom Claims "One Year Lead" Over Competitors with New 3G Chipset

Broadcom has announced the launch of a new single-chip HSPA processor that integrates all of the key 3G cellular and mobile technologies on an extremely low power, single 65 nanometer chip which the company says will enable handset vendors to considerably lower 3G phone costs. Broadcom said that never before has anyone integrated as many radio devices on a single chip.

"With what we believe is more than a full year's lead over similar competing products, this new 3G solution should place Broadcom squarely at the head of the hyper-competitive 3G chip race," said Yossi Cohen, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's Mobile Platforms Group. "We built upon the success of our single-chip EDGE solution and merely eight months later our engineers not only built a single chip HSUPA solution, but also integrated Bluetooth, FM radio, and the next level of multimedia. This is truly amazing engineering execution, a hallmark of Broadcom. Our investments in multi-modal CMOS RF and high definition multimedia technologies will further widen our mobile technology leadership in the coming years."

Announced today is the BCM21551 3G "Phone on a Chip," which combines a high-speed HSUPA 3G baseband, a multi-band radio frequency (RF) transceiver, Bluetooth 2.1 with enhanced data rate (EDR) technology, an FM radio receiver and an FM radio transmitter (for car stereo music playback). The device also features advanced multimedia processing, up to five Megapixel camera support, and 30 frame per second video with "TV Out," as well as support for the HSUPA, HSDPA, WCDMA and EDGE cellular protocols.

The BCM21551 also incorporates Broadcom's proprietary M-Stream and single antenna interference cancellation (SAIC) signal processing technologies designed to improve cellular handset reception and voice quality, ultimately resulting in fewer dropped calls.

The BCM21551 3G baseband processor is available now to early access customers and is priced at US$23 in large quantities.

Nokia is a major customer of Broadcom and Samsung announced its intention to use Broadcom chips in its 3G handsets last week.

Posted to the site on 15th October 2007