Product category:
Programmable Logic Devices
News Release from: QuickLogic | Subject: Customer specific standard products
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 14 September 2007
Programmable devices enable mobile
differentiation
Owen Bateman of QuickLogic explains to Laurence Marchini why customer specific standard products are made for the mobile market.
Not so very long ago, if you had suggested to any designer of mass-market mobile devices that he or she would be better off using programmable logic in his or her design you would probably have been shown the door very quickly And the reasons cited would have been entirely plausible on the various grounds that programmable logic is too expensive; too power hungry; takes up valuable PCB space etc
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 27 Mar 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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And what could it bring to the design that couldn't be done by traditional means? Now, according to Owen Bateman, Director of Sales in Northern Europe for QuickLogic, the increasing complexity of even low-end mobiles has changed all that.
And his company's CSSP (customer specific standard product) strategy has put it in an ideal position to exploit the opportunity.
The drive to put ever more functionality into a handset, combined with the time-to-market pressures brought about by the arrival of increasing numbers of Far Eastern OEMs and ODMs, have left designers with some seemingly impossible requirements.
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"The baseband is being asked to do a whole bunch of things not previously envisaged", says Bateman, "and designers are desperate for a quick fix that will allow them to accommodate all these functions without slowing down the processor".
And it's not just the processing of extra features that is causing the problem.
The features (and the market) have brought about a huge increase in the variety of standard interfaces that are required in today's handsets, ranging from SD, SDIO and MMC on the more traditionally handset-oriented card front to interfaces that are arriving from the mobile computing arena such as CE-ATA, USB, PCI etc.
Within its CSSP strategy, QuickLogic has two platform families it reckons are ideal for the mobile market.
Both PolarPro and ArcticLink are based on the company's ViaLink (antifuse) programmable fabric technology, and both come with a wide variety of proven system blocks and software drivers that the company can integrate into the finished CSSP to perform all those functions that the application processor really shouldn't be doing.
Because ViaLink is an antifuse technology, the parts are inherently low in power consumption, fast and nonvolatile.
And because QuickLogic has invested considerable time in the past in integrating interfaces into its devices - "Our experience in the PCI marketplace is key to this", says Bateman - an awful lot of functionality can be squeezed into a very small space.
One of the most appealing aspects of the CSSP approach is that it allows designs to evolve.
Time in market is just as important as time to market in this respect.
And if a handset design can be easily adapted to accommodate additional features - whether they be new interface standards, more memory or some previously unforeseen customer "must-have" - then the per-unit cost of the original design will be greatly reduced.
This facility to produce a Mk I device with a standard feature set and evolve it in both directions - Mk II might be an enhanced version, whereas Mk III could even be a cut-down budget unit - is proving popular with many designers.
"This is absolutely made for Asian the ODM model", says Bateman, "as it enables the fast time to market they demand".
Not surprisingly, such a major shift has required fundamental changes in how QuickLogic does business.
However, the company has identified what it describes as a "high-growth defensible opportunity".
And it would appear its sales folk are no longer being shown the door.
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