System on a chip company LSI Logic Corp has taken the wraps off of a new programmable chip for the GSM handset market. The device will enable manufacturers to install their own software and features on to their devices, therefore cutting the time to market of their wireless handsets by around half, according to LSI. The Milpitas, California company has imaginatively called the chip the GSM solution and hopes the combining of several features on one chip will result in lower cost digital telephones that will require less power. The new chip will be sold to manufacturers ranging from the established major mobile phone players down to operations that have not operated in this space before. Ideally LSI would like to sell the new chips in units of around 500,000, and each chip will cost $15 or under. The chip integrates mixed signal functions and all digital baseband logic onto a single digital CMOS chip. Chip designers can then customize the design in a Random Access Memory based single chip architecture. The new chip will compete in the same space as a device from rival VLSI Technology Inc, but business development manager for LSI’s wireless communications business unit Fabrizio Bianchi says the rival offering is not as specialized as the LSI offering. The new chip is the first offering of major consequence to come out of Bianchi’s unit since its establishment in November 1995.
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