VLSI: Chipping in for Wireless

Devices of the future are a reality today thanks to advancements
in semiconductor design. Be it a design of complex compression algorithms or a
mixed signal component design, VLSI designs make all this possible. They also
have made wireless embedded systems shrink day by day.

Emerging wireless communications technologies are going beyond
traditional voice services, and now have the potential to dramatically enhance
the Internet experience by adding new capabilities like built-in cameras,
Bluetooth connectivity and MP3 support. As the task becomes more complex,
semiconductor suppliers are taking on greater challenges, providing complete
platform solutions that include not just the RF, baseband and mixed-signal
circuitry, but also the protocol stack and user interface software,
comprehensive reference designs and development tools.

The demand for real-time VLSI compression in high-speed wireless
local area networks is rising. VLSI engineers are today very much part of the
wireless embedded systems work. Complex wireless embedded components are able to
function only when they are developed in hardware-the software drastically
fails to meet requirements. Using the Advance VLSI design and Mixed signal
design, designing complex functions are now feasible.

Today one of the most challenging areas for VLSI designers is
VLSI circuit and system design for wireless applications. The design of a
cellular radio system involves several engineering disciplines ranging from
communication theory and digital signal processing to high frequency
semiconductor technology and circuit design. Furthermore, the new generation of
wireless systems, which includes multimedia, puts severe constraints on
performance, cost, size, power and energy.

Designing Mobility

The mobile entertainment ecosystem comprises thousands of companies-wireless
carriers, consumer electronics retailers, content developers, device
manufacturers and software developers. All these companies are competing for a
potentially lucrative stake. Creating open, interoperable semiconductor
solutions to fuel this ecosystem will in turn drive highly creative and
strategic partnerships. These partnerships will feed innovation and help
overcome some of the barriers to successful market entries for many new and
emerging technologies, innovative products and market participants.

Creating compelling devices for mobile entertainment poses a
special set of challenges. The market is moving forward with incredible
momentum, pushing designers and manufacturers to quickly solve demanding and
often unexpected problems related to wireless connectivity, power management,
processor performance, security and interoperability. These are just a few of
the challenges that semiconductor companies face in their efforts to enable a
seamless mobile entertainment experience.

Mobility is increasing the speed and changing the character of
this evolution. Audio has already gone mobile, in the form of podcasting, audio
books and music on MP3 players. It won't be long before the mobile trend will
encompass multimedia.

Gamers are designing and distributing their own games; perhaps
they will soon be able to distribute wirelessly. Amateur filmmakers have
websites dedicated to showcasing their short films; soon it may be possible to
send digital video directly from a set to their home studio. This kind of
mobility revolution poses special technical challenges.

Power Management

As devices become more complex and consume more power, it becomes critical
to discover ways to squeeze more life out of batteries. Even an application that
you might think of as low-power, such as mobile email, can drain a battery
quickly because the application is constantly pinging a central server for
updates. Can you imagine how quickly a multiplayer networked videogame would
drain the average handheld's battery? Broadband and always-on appliances will
pose a future power problem.

Power management is the single most worrying concern for mobile
companies and operators alike. Low power design is a business critical need and
has a direct impact on carrier revenue. Every time a call drops because of low
battery, it translates into lost revenue.

The drive for smaller form-factor phones with lighter batteries
has forced vendors to reduce the power consumed by the load. While Li-ion
batteries have contributed significantly to reduce the form factor and weight of
phones, the energy density of Li-ion batteries is not expected to increase much.

Threatened with the potential of high costs coupled with missed
time-to-market opportunities, companies will have to overcome their reluctance
to adopt advanced process geometries and effective low-power methodologies at
90nm, 65nm, and below. This requires participation from all segments of the
industry.

Semiconductor companies are cognizant of the power management
challenge and have joined hands and created forums to address the issue. One
such initiative is the Power Forward Initiative (PFI). The goal of the
initiative is to remove the barriers to automation of advanced low power design,
and to provide a pathway towards the development of a standards-based solution.

ZigBee, the IEEE 802.15.4 standard for wireless networking,
automation and control applications is another example of a power-saving
wireless solution.

Security

Good security is critical for mobile entertainment applications,
particularly those that involve over-the-air transactions such as purchasing
content or logging onto a private network. Digital rights management (DRM) is an
essential security component that must be resolved before copyright holders
agree to license or develop mobile content. There must be protection against
mobile-device worms and viruses, hackers, spam, spim (instant-message spam) and
other modern hazards.

One technical problem with security is closely related to the
power problem: Encryption leads to enormous power drain. As security protocols
become more complex (and therefore more secure), they need more power during the
encryption and decryption processes.

To address this, VLSI engineers have designed processors that
have security "baked in" to the chip itself, protecting a device's
modem and providing secure communications at the hardware level. For carriers,
the architecture provides protection against malicious service attacks and
service theft, configuration protection, and cloning. For content providers, it
blocks illegal access to licensed content, protecting against unauthorized use
and distribution. For consumers, private data is inaccessible, helping protect
against identity theft.

Challenging Creativity

As trends in the mobile industry evolve, innovations at the VLSI level need
to keep happening. Small form factors of handheld devices and greater
performance the ultimate goal are for device manufacturers, as consumers demand
more out of their handhelds.

Designing the converged device remains a creator's challenge.
People are still more likely to carry several devices for different tasks, such
as separate cellular handsets, PDAs and PMPs. Manufacturers and designers have
not yet found the magic combination of features and style-call it the Swiss
Army entertainment device-that will spark consumers' interest.

Another related issue is miniaturization and integration.
Miniaturization is essential to the "mobile" part of mobile
entertainment, and highly integrated products help make mobile products smaller
and cheaper. The industrial design and ergonomics of entertainment are
especially important in mobile devices. Smaller, more integrated components
allow OEMs and designers more room to design around the "guts" of a
device, and more room to add their own components for new and differentiating
applications.

However, the designers have to keep the speed bar going higher
with every design iteration, as speed is vital for the users to communicate and
interact. This is a challenge that calls for a breakthrough innovation from the
VLSI designers pool.

Storage on handheld devices is another challenge. Mobile authors
want small, light, rugged, multifunction and multimode devices that they can
take anywhere. They also want to be able to seamlessly move the content they
create from those portable devices to the Internet, to other devices, to
personalized secure networks-in other words, anywhere.

Currently, hard drives on handheld devices can't always keep
up with network speeds or content capacity requirements. Users might be able to
connect to a wireless network at many hundreds of megabits per second, but there
are few hard drives that can "swallow" data at high data rates. This
is a problem that will need to be solved before the widespread adoption of
high-data-rate mobile services is feasible.

Enabling Business

Semiconductor companies now offer complete system solutions that include all
the devices from the baseband through the PA, as well as all of the software.
They are also working collaboratively with handset manufacturers' on board
layouts. Handset manufacturers are focused primarily on form factor, MMI,
plastics and feature/performance definition and feedback. This collaborative
model has typically reduced handset time-to-market to 6 months, rather than 12.

Multi-vector technology advances and an evolving design and
development model are accelerating the development of next-generation mobile
handsets. These trends present significant opportunities for focused
semiconductor suppliers who have a comprehensive portfolio of wireless
technologies and products.

At the same time, a subtle shift in how semiconductor and
handset manufacturers work together is opening up new opportunities for
innovation, as semiconductor manufacturers concentrate on platform solutions,
while handset manufacturers address higher-level challenges such as software and
product differentiation.

Advances in process technology, packaging, system architectures
and comprehensive system integration are driving significant new capabilities.
As semiconductor companies are reaching a critical mass with wireless
telecommunications, the innovation cycle goes up the curve with limitless
opportunities ahead.

Malovika Rao


malovikar@cybermedia.co.in