Infineon Technologies AG announced the
availability of its new generation 3G platform family. This new
platform family addresses all major 3G market segments and includes a
high performance HSPA modem solution, a feature phone solution enriched
with high multimedia capabilities and a cost-efficient 3G solution.
This platform family is a further step on Infineon’s integration
roadmap: it reduces the number of devices in the chipset from three to
two and the component count of a typical platform by 50 per cent.
The new 3G-solutions offer the industry’s smallest PCB (printed
circuit board) footprint with a space reduction of up to 40 per cent.
Furthermore the standby power is reduced by up to 30 per cent compared
to existing HSDPA platform solutions.
“Our new platforms enable our customers to fully reuse their
hardware and software developments and launch multiple phones covering
all feature phone market segments with lower cost and faster
time-to-market,” said Prof. Dr. Hermann Eul, Executive Vice President
of the Infineon Management Board and President of the Communication
Solutions Business Group.
“Given the compelling size of our new Baseband and RF devices and
the low component count of our platforms, we are offering the world’s
smallest platform footprint, enabling manufacturers to build slim,
feature rich HSUPA / HSDPA phones for all 3G market segments.”
Infineon uses its own dual-mode 3GPP release 6 Protocol Stack,
which enables the company to provide complete in-house system
solutions. Having the ownership of each and every platform component
eases completing lab tests (GCF, PTCRB and IOT), field tests and
operator approvals on Infineon’s reference platforms, which in turn
accelerates customers’ phone projects substantially.
The
solutions are based on new members of the X-GOLD 61x-series and
Infineon’s market leading 3G Radio Frequency (RF) transceiver device,
the SMARTi UE. The X-GOLD 61x-series are monolithically integrated,
low power 65nm baseband devices that include all digital, analog and
power management functions.
Infineon’s scalable baseband architecture based on ARM1,
initially introduced at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona
with 2G-devices (X-GOLD 113, X-GOLD 213) is now extended to cover the
3G-segment. This gives Infineon’s customers the advantage of a very
high degree of software and hardware design reuse over the entire
mobile phone portfolio - from GSM to HSPA.
Multiple Platforms Covering the Complete 3G Phone Market Segment
The high performance platform XMM 6180 with the X-GOLD 618
baseband offers HSDPA/HSUPA capabilities of 7.2Mbps/2.9Mbps, an
integrated high-end video accelerator for recording and playback of VGA
video content and the ability to connect to cameras with up to 5
MPixels.
The cost-efficient 3G feature phone platform XMM 6170 with the
X-GOLD™ 617 baseband supports HSDPA 3.6Mbps, recording and playback
functionality of QVGA video content and the ability to connect to
cameras with 2 MPixels.
The modem platform solution XMM 6160 with the X-GOLD 616 baseband
offers HSDPA/HSUPA capabilities of 7.2Mbps/5.8 Mbps and includes
hardware and software interfaces to an application processor or a PC as
wireless modem.
All Baseband chips are manufactured in 65nm and packaged with
Infineon-pioneered eWLB package technology, resulting in a dimension of
8x8x0.8 mm, which are also pin compatible across all platforms.
Additionally, Infineon includes its next generation multi-band RF
transceiver chip, SMARTi UE, into all its dual-mode platforms
supporting three and four frequency bands for WCDMA and EDGE standards,
respectively.
Availability
Verified samples and evaluation boards are available by end of June. Volume production starts in the second half of 2009.