Product category:
Microprocessors, Microcontrollers and DSPs
News Release from: Freescale Semiconductor | Subject: Mobile Extreme Convergence architecture
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 29 October 2003
New architecture to step down mobile
device sizes
Motorola reckons it is completely revolutionising the development of multimedia mobile devices with its new Mobile Extreme Convergence architecture.
Motorola reckons it is completely revolutionising the development of multimedia mobile devices with its new Mobile Extreme Convergence (MXC) architecture, which will remove many of the current design limitations of affordable, advanced, full-featured mobile devices By totally redesigning the mobile architecture to combine functions, high-performance mass-market mobile devices can be developed affordably on a platform the size of a postage stamp - a significant jump over today's smallest approaches that are the size of a business card
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 20 Mar 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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The MXC architecture simplifies and cuts development times, drives new applications, increases carrier margins and speeds adoption of mobile devices by rethinking the architecture to eliminate current design roadblocks and reduce cost, complexity, size, power consumption and part count.
It will open new markets for the next generation of "smart" mobile devices and consumer electronics.
"With the Extreme Convergence architecture, Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector has found a way to simplify the design of hardware and software and to reduce the cost of components for mobile systems", said Max Baron, Principal Analyst, InStat/MDR.
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"Motorola's technical and business strategy combines DSP and applications processor cores positioning the company to compete in a wide variety of applications that goes beyond traditional mobile devices and into consumer electronics.
The rapid delivery of chips and platforms by Motorola for mobile and tethered applications will enable it to secure a solid share in an addressable embedded processors market that is expected to consume over 900 million chips by 2007".
MXC is specifically designed to provide a powerful, yet simplified, device development platform for manufacturers and mobile operators to bring advanced products to consumers.
MXC is designed to significantly reduce the materials and development effort required enabling OEM developers to deliver higher featured mobile devices at nearly half the cost and more rapidly than ever before.
The MXC's small footprint, high performance, and flexibility allow developers to use a single platform to target multiple product designs ranging from entertainment to enterprise applications that currently are delivered through as many as 300-400 components.
This facilitates the creation of thousands of permutations of devices without changing the central core of the designs.
As mobile carriers struggle to improve margins, they are pressuring suppliers to deliver products at much lower price points.
Incremental cost improvements are no longer enough.
OEMs can offer feature-rich, innovative devices at mass market prices, doubling the addressable market size, creating new revenue opportunities and providing higher value services to their customers.
To protect consumers, operators and content owners, the market requires mobile devices offering both onboard security, like fingerprint recognition technology, and secure over-the-air transactions.
Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector built a security engine into the MXC architecture to increase the speed of adoption of everything from music downloads to mobile credit card transactions.
"To meet growing cost pressures manufacturers have attempted to shrink the size of components.
We went outside of that box and rethought the entire device architecture.
Our new MXC architecture is the result, and with it, we believe we have a revolutionary innovation that will significantly impact mobile market growth", said Franz Fink, Vice President and General Manager of Motorola's Wireless and Mobile Systems Group.
"The MXC architecture is a streamlined approach to building devices, and that means OEMs have the potential to double or even triple the number and kind of devices they make and deploy.
MXC also makes it possible for OEMs to bring highly valued applications into the mass-market, enabling untapped value for suppliers, carriers, developers and consumers alike".
Comprising one of the largest assemblies of advanced technology in its history, Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector has combined an exceptional array of knowledge and design expertise to produce this revolutionary architecture.
A complete rethink of cellular platform design, the MXC architecture: converges the hardware needed to drive call processing technology and applications processing technology with a shared memory system, enhancing the performance of both functions; separates the communication function software to provide a clean application development environment for rapid deployment of features across tiers, allowing developers to write once and port their applications to any other device, using a consistent processing core; uses hardware acceleration and memory caching techniques to dramatically cut power consumption; secures airborne transactions and provides onboard security by incorporating Motorola's security technology to help protect consumers and enable widespread access to anywhere, anytime downloads like video files and mobile commerce transactions; and enables a "system-in-a-postage-stamp"-size module, to be easily integrated into existing device footprints.
When fully implemented, the architecture is expected to deliver a fully equipped "smartphone" platform in a 16 x 20mm package and a slim 1.4mm thich, enabling virtually any product - an MP3 player, a handheld DVD, a digital camera - to become a fully functioned "smart mobile device".
The first chips using the MXC architecture are expected to sample in the second half of 2004.
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