Manufacturer says...

ChipCenter's Paul O'Shea says...

AirForce One Chip Makes Wi-Fi Practical for PDAs, Cell Phones, Digital Cameras, MP3 Players and Other Portable Devices Complete Reference Designs Reduce Size by 87% and Power Consumption by as Much as 97% Compared to Existing Solutions Broadcom Corporation, the leading provider of silicon solutions enabling broadband communications, today announced that it is shipping the world's first single-chip Wi-Fi solution, the Broadcom BCM4317. Broadcom's AirForce One wireless LAN solutions are the size of a postage stamp and consume up to 97 percent less power than other Wi-Fi solutions on the market. The unprecedented size and efficiency of the one-chip offering make Wi-Fi connectivity practical for the first time for a wide range of pocketsize electronic devices, including PDAs, cell phones, digital cameras, MP3 players and other portable devices. "Wireless LANs have seen explosive growth in recent years, due to the proliferation of Wi-Fi technology," said Tim Bajarin, Principal Analyst of the research firm Creative Strategies. "Until now, wireless connectivity has been primarily confined to PCs, due to the power and size demands of traditional wireless LAN chipsets. The introduction of Broadcom's single- chip solution is a revolutionary breakthrough for the wireless industry " one that will reach previously untapped markets and generate endless possibilities for consumers." Integration, Size Enable New Generation of Wireless Devices Broadcom was the first vendor to deliver all-CMOS wireless LAN and Bluetooth solutions, and has now leveraged that expertise to produce the first single-chip, all-CMOS wireless LAN transceiver. While competing products require multiple chips and many discrete components, Broadcom's AirForce One single-chip solution integrates a 2.4 GHz radio, power amplifier, IEEE 802.11b baseband processor, medium access controller (MAC), Tx/Rx and diversity switches and all other radio components onto a single silicon die. This unprecedented level of chip integration eliminates more than 100 discrete components and makes the one-chip module 87 percent smaller than traditional mini-PCI Wi-Fi solutions. "Mobile device manufacturers continue to drive requirements for silicon integration by adding exciting new capabilities into smaller form factors," said Alan E. "Lanny" Ross, President and CEO of Broadcom. "By leveraging superior communications technology and unparalleled mixed signal CMOS expertise, Broadcom's one-chip Wi-Fi solution meets the size, cost and power requirements of compact mobile devices. This opens the door for us to enable countless new applications and further extends our leadership in the wireless networking market." Broadcom's one-chip solution also offers a comprehensive power management scheme to extend the battery life of small mobile devices. This power management approach consumes an average of 70-97% less power than existing solutions and leverages the benefits of extreme integration, innovative hardware design and Broadcom's new SuperStandby software. SuperStandby wakes the minimum amount of circuitry for the shortest possible period of time, allowing the one-chip module to consume up to 97 percent less power than the Intel Centrino wireless LAN solution in standby mode(1). Pocket-sized mobile devices spend a majority of their time in standby mode, and the power savings offered by the AirForce One chip solution can add several days of battery life to a Wi-Fi- enabled PDA. Broadcom's AirForce One chip design is the industry's most cost effective architecture for Wi-Fi chipsets. To facilitate the adoption of the single-chip solution in new wireless-enabled devices, Broadcom is sampling three reference designs that lower wireless LAN implementation costs and accelerate time-to-market for manufacturers. These designs simplify the building of cost effective modules by drastically reducing the number of off-chip components and allowing concurrent RF and silicon testing. The AirForce One module's small size and Broadcom's AirForce OneDriver software toolkit allow mobile device vendors to more efficiently integrate wireless networking into their products. In addition to the unique benefits afforded by a single-chip solution, the AirForce One solution leverages Broadcom's CMOS hardware expertise and proven OneDriver software to deliver the superior performance, range and security features of its industry-leading wireless LAN chipsets. The OneDriver software includes all of the elements required for submission to Wi-Fi labs for certification testing, provides maximum stability and flexibility across Broadcom's entire line of AirForce wireless LAN products, and enables a comprehensive portfolio of features, including: -- The industry's most comprehensive security portfolio, including Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and Cisco Compatible Extensions (CCX), as well as built-in hardware support for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES); and -- Broadcom Xpress frame-bursting technology to improve the efficiency and increase overall throughput of a wireless network Broadcom's high performance WLAN product line, AirForce, features the greatest breadth and depth in the industry. In addition to transceivers that provide IEEE 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11a and dual-band 802.11a/g solutions, Broadcom integrates wireless network processors, communications technologies and OneDriver software solutions into reference designs that speed customer time to market. Broadcom partners are developing a variety of client solutions based on AirForce products and technology, including routers, access points, cable modems, DSL modems, Bluetooth solutions and GPRS cellular products. Broadcom Corporation is the leading provider of highly integrated silicon solutions that enable broadband communications and networking of voice, video and data services. Using proprietary technologies and advanced design methodologies, Broadcom designs, develops and supplies complete system-on-a-chip solutions and related hardware and software applications for every major broadband communications market. Our diverse product portfolio includes solutions for digital cable and satellite set-top boxes; cable and DSL modems and residential gateways; high-speed transmission and switching for local, metropolitan, wide area and storage networking; home and wireless networking; cellular and terrestrial wireless communications; Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gateway and telephony systems; broadband network processors; and SystemI/O server solutions. These technologies and products support our core mission: Connecting everything. Broadcom is headquartered in Irvine, Calif., and may be contacted at 1-949-450-8700 or at Broadcom. Broadcom, the pulse logo, Connecting everything, 54g, the 54g logo, AirForce, AirForce One OneDriver, SystemI/O and SuperStandby are trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. Bluetooth is a trademark of the Bluetooth SIG. Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Protected Access are trademarks of the Wi-Fi Alliance. Intel and Centrino are trademarks of Intel Corporation. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. (1) Based upon a comparison of internal BCM4317 test results with published performance of the Intel PRO Wireless 2100 miniPCI Card solution that ships in a bundle with the Pentium-M processor.

Broadcom is introducing a new wireless LAN solution and the company thinks it will open up a new set of markets for WLAN. A lot of portable and handheld devices can be served by this chip. This will enable Broadcom to expand beyond the PC space, into the retail space, which is growing much faster than the PC market. The mobile devices in the home and workplace will require some kind of connectivity or networking, and the obvious choice is wireless. Broadcom's first offering will be a module that will slide into a cell phone or PDA port. Then the company will help cell-phone manufacturers integrate the design into the phone. Automotive makers also are looking at putting a receiver in the car for downloading music files to an MP3 type player in the car. The obvious candidates are Bluetooth and 802.11 connections. The car makers probably won't have any built-in products until model year 2006 but the after market manufacturers will be ready sooner, sometime in 2004 are some guesstimates. What's important with this new design? It's a single-chip design, which is good and bad according to how you look at it. It's good because it enables wireless connectivity in hand-held products not only because of its small size (about the size of a postage stamp) but also because of its lower power requirements than other solutions. But the one point I think may be most important is the company's development of a one chip all CMOS design. If Broadcom didn't have a CMOS process then it couldn't create this chip, and if it didn't have a CMOS radio then the company couldn't even do the integration. There were also significant design improvements compared to the previous two-chip design especially in design techniques for lower power consumption and extended battery life. Some manufacturers think its better to separate the radio portion from the rest of the design, using SiGe and even GaAs for a complete solution. These companies don't, or can't, integrate the analog content with the digital baseband and power management circuits. However, some companies are integrating the power amp with the RF design, using SiGe. These companies are separating the paths of integration. They are integrating the baseband with the memory and processors while separating it from the integrated RF and mixed signal functions. For them, the design should separate the analog and digitall because it is a scaling issue. Analog doesn't allow aggressive scaling compared to digital designs. Some of the reasons include matching, dynamic range and noise requirements. The thinking for these companies is about integrating the baseband and the transceiver but not the power section. And that leads to what Broadcom has been able to do " integrate just about everything. The historic problem with CMOS and RF is the need for exact matching and very tight component values. For example, a resistor of 10k ohms must be exactly10k ohms. When using CMOS it is very hard to get exact numbers. You can match relatively, but you can't guarantee absolute values. That is why Broadcom developed and patented several techniques that ensure that it can get those exact values. All of Broadcom's intellectual values are based on how to use CMOS to get the exact numbers in the RF section. The company also has some tricks that use off-chip components to measure and sample and then bring the results back on-chip to do some tuning. You may wonder about the heat and interference issues that are common when the PA is integrated using CMOS. Broadcom agrees that CMOS will tend to generate more heat but it has less interference than other processes, because the fundamental characteristics of CMOS, the 1/F noise or flicker noise, is actually lower than SiGe or GaAs. This issue is resolved with Broadcom's patented CMOS matching design technique. To resolve the heat issues Broadcom isolates and keeps the PA as a local heat center so it doesn't influence the rest of the chip, because as the PA output power increases the heat effect will increase. The company limits the output power to about 12.5 dBm and that helps with the heating issue. There also are some impressive figures listed in the press release. For example, the company says that its all-CMOS design reduces power consumption in transmit, receive and standby modes of operation. These will be very important attributes as wireless designs move into smaller devices such as PDAs, MP3s, digital cameras, and cell phones. Especially important is the 97% less power consumption than the Intel Centrino while in the stand by mode, because these hand held devices spend much of their time in standby. That savings results in longer battery life, and everyone likes that. Broadcom's first AirForce One chip is the BCM4317. The AirForce BCM94317SD and BCM94317CF are production-ready module reference designs that enable customers to easily add 802.11b connectivity to small mobile devices. Manufacturers can also add Bluetooth to their devices using the AirForce BCM94317SB reference design, which integrates single-chip 802.11b and Broadcom's single-chip BCM2035 Bluetooth transceiver on the same module. The BCM4317 and AirForce One reference design products are currently shipping to Broadcom's early access partners. Product Brochure _____________________________