Guest Blog by Will Strauss, President & Principal Analyst, Forward Concepts

Renesas Mobile Corp. Arrives

As noted last month, today Renesas makes its best pitch to move out of the confines of the Japan-centric wireless market and becoming a worldwide force through the formation of its new subsidiary, Renesas Mobile Corp. (RMC).  Nokia’s wireless business assets transferred to the new company yesterday and operations RMC begin now. The Nokia wireless modem assets (GSM/WCDMA/HSPA/LTE, ranked #1 worldwide) are now merged with Renesas application processor (they rank themselves as #1 WW), baseband processor (ranked as #1 in Japan) and RF ICs (they rank as in the top 5, WW) for a complete mobile platform.

Headquartered in Tokyo, the company has ambitious plans to be the in the “Top 3″ global mobile platform vendor rankings by 2015.  RMC has plans beyond cellphones; with a roadmap that includes any “convergence device” that requires wireless connectivity.  Oh yes, they are committed to MeeGo as their favored smartphone O/S.  More will be revealed in February at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where RMC plans a major LTE presence.  We will be watching closely to see how the next 12 months shake out for this global merger of East and West.

Why is Intel Playing Foundry?

Intel will create chips based on its 22-nanometer technology for Achronix Semiconductor, Achronix announced last month.  A number of industry articles have raised the question as to why Intel would open up its “family jewel box” to others.  I believe that it’s less mysterious than most imagine.

Jim Bixby, then CEO of Brooktree Corp., a San Diego startup that was later bought by Qualcomm (and bringing Sanjay Jha on board), once said to me: “Having your own fab is like having a swimming pool full of sharks…that you have to feed every day.” I suspect that Intel wants to make sure that its top-of-the-line process line is fed every day, even when demand for its own chips slows down at times.

High-end FPGAs demand the best fab they can get.  That’s why some FPGAs have sold for over $4,000 per chip.  Besides FPGAs, what other high-volume devices need the highest performance possible?  Of course, the other FPGA houses (Altera & Xilinx) are already pushing the traditional foundries (TSMC & Globalfoundries) for their best processes, but newcomer Tabula might be a prospect, too. Then, there’s AMD, but I think that competitors are not invited to the party.  No doubt, graphics processing units (GPUs) would also benefit, but I don’t think Intel is inclined to helpNvidia do better.  It is notable that Intel has embraced Altera’s Arria II GX FPGAs in the same package with its newest E600C Atom processor, billed as the “first configurable Atom-based processor.”   It’s also worth noting (follow in the next section) that the Altera FPGA in the E600C contains dedicated DSP blocks (232 18×18-bit multipliers). Intel’s response to our query revealed that it is not fabbing the Altera FPGAs.

Maybe DSPs would also be a fit for the foundry service.  After all, Texas Instruments‘ latest 8-core DSP for cellular base stations (and no doubt soon in media gateways and video transcoders) is fabbed in TSMC’s 40 nm process. And a 22nm version is surely on their roadmap for the next (12-core?) DSP.  But, check out my next section below, which throws water on that prospect. Then there are the multicore processing houses like Cavium andNetLogic Microsystems with their MIPS Technologies-based products for cellular gateways, assuming that MIPS architectures can scale down to 22nm.  If the Achronix arrangement works well, we can expect Intel to take in a few more high-end chips from others.

But, maybe low-end chips too.  Intel will also be fabbing chips for Lilliputian Systems for their Silicon Power Cell power generator that is fueled by recyclable butane cartridges.  These chips will be fabbed in Intel’s older Hudson MA facility (formerly DEC’s fab).  Intel is also an investor in the Wilmington MA company.  Likely, Intel has other foundry relationships that we don’t know about.

Intel Licenses CEVA’s Top DSP Core

In early November, CEVA announced (without further comment) that Intel was licensing its top-of-the-line CEVA-XC DSP core.  Since Infineon (soon to be acquired by Intel) had announced last quarter that it had licensed CEVA’s TeakLite III core, one wonders what’s up. Infineon, and earlier as Siemens Semiconductor, has long been a major licensee of CEVA cores for its cellphone baseband chips, including those that have been in all versions of the iPhone…at least until now.  My speculation is that Infineon had licensed the TeakLite III cores for an upcoming multi-DSP LTE baseband chip. So why is Intel licensing the more powerful CEVA-XC core?  There are two possibilities: 1) Intel wants to ensure that its (distant-) future “LTE Advanced” cellphone basebands will have enough horsepower, or 2) Intel is looking at entering the base station market, for which the XC core family is well-suited.

Considering that Intel’s X86 products are already #2 in communications infrastructure CPUs, following #1 Freescale’s CorIQ (PowerPC) product line, it may not be too much of a reach to take in more of the significant cellular base station baseband chip market, currently dominated by Texas Instruments, Freescale and LSI Corp.  Since it is premature for Intel to be directing Infineon’s future designs. I believe that my #2 assumption is the correct one.  This view is reinforced by Intel’s online promotional video at Intel Architecture Video Watch out TI, Freescale and LSI: Intel is on the move again.

Nvidia’s Tegra 2 Jumps into the Cellphone Applications Processor Market

Nvidia’s Tegra 2 application processor will be making a big splash at January’s CES conference.  Nvidia has already landed Tegra 2 orders from PC vendors ASUSTeK Computer, Acer and Toshiba and now the word on the street is that Tegra 2 will be in upcoming cellphone models from Motorola, HTC and LG.  Moreover, tablets and pads based on Tegra 2 will be rolling out from Motorola and LG, and perhaps others.  Although the Tegra 2 is based on dual-processor ARM Cortex-A9s, Nvidia’s own massively parallel graphics engine is said to enable better graphics at lower power consumption that of competing application processors from Qualcomm (Scorpion) and Texas Instruments (OMAP4).  But, we’re anxious to see the real power draw specs.

All Signs Point to Verizon‘s iPhone

With unverified reports coming out of Taiwan of TSMC’s ramp-up of Qualcomm’s chips for CDMA-based iPhones and continuous reports out of Chinaindicating such iPhones are in production there, it is pretty clear that the rumors of the Verizon iPhone are on the mark. The Wall Street Journal reports that Pegatron, the contract manufacturing subsidiary of ASUSTeK (itself the largest manufacturer of PC motherboards) is manufacturing the Verizon iPhones.  Moreover, AT&T is now actively promoting alternative smartphones…before the end of its exclusive agreement with Apple.  So, the only mystery left is when.

Verizon promises to launch its “4G LTE” service this month, and proclaims that the U.S. network is the “most advanced 4G network in the world.”  The first video commercial clearly indicates it’s a USB dongle implementation, so it’s unlikely that Verizon’s iPhone will be a “4G LTE” device.  An “LTE news conference” is scheduled for today at Noon EST (Dec. 1st), so details are forthcoming.

Imagination Technologies buys HelloSoft

The leader in mobile graphics IP, U.K.-based Imagination Technologies, announced that it was purchasing DSP/VoIP experts HelloSoft for about $47 million, structured over time.  However, some have questioned the rationale for Imagination’s move.  Imagination’s president stated that “HelloSoft’s software enabled voice and video exchanges over the Internet in wireless networks such as Wi-Fi, WiMAX and the next generation mobile network LTE… It is very complementary to our graphics and multimedia engine in bringing end-to-end media over Internet Protocol.”  We agree that it is complementary to the company’s best known products, but we have a different take on the acquisition.  U.S. headquartered HelloSoft brings its Hyderabad (India) DSP software expertise and Asian business connections to Imagination.

Although Imagination is best known for its POWERVR graphics technology, the company’s lesser-known 32-bit, multithreaded, META DSP cores can instantly benefit from HelloSoft’s significant DSP and VoIP capabilities.  Besides, the acquired India operation provides a solid base for Imagination to expand its R&D operations there.  And, as LTE evolves into and all-IP network, the HelloSoft acquisition will strengthen Imagination’s hand in the evolving (IMS) wireless/wireline IP interconnect technology.

Huawei buys Belgian LTE design house

M&A rolls on.  We couldn’t possibly list all of the semiconductor mergers and acquisitions that have occurred this quarter, but in wireless it’s worth noting that China’s Huawei has acquired Belgium-based LTE modem house M4S NV. M4S is an IMEC spinoff that employs IMEC’s ADRES-based DSP for SDR radio.   M4S became a subsidiary of USB dongle and data card supplier Option NV and the acquisition cost Huawei approximately EUR 8 million.  Option was once #1 in the European USB dongle/data card market…until Huawei displaced them with cheaper products.  But then ZTE displaced Huawei with even cheaper products.  I think we will see this same lower-pricing scenario in other wireless markets.

Shameless Plug

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As always, I invite your comments.