A report into mobile processors has indentified big changes in design strategies by smartphone companies and a change of the guard in chipset suppliers.
While tablet PC processors look increasingly look like graphics processors (GPUs).
The "Global and China Mobile Phone and Tablet PC Processor Industry Report, 2010-2011" from Research and Markets points out that while Texas Instruments ranked the first in mobile phone baseband industry for consecutive years in the 2G era by virtue of cooperation with Nokia.
“The great success in the 2G era has resulted in the comparatively late start-up of TI in 3G era and TI has been surpassed by Qualcomm,” said the report.
TI sees an end to its mobile phone baseband business in 2012. It is focusing on the analogue and DSP elements of mobile phone design.
“The life cycle of analogue device could be more than 30 years, and the input-output ratio is far higher than that of mobile phone baseband sector,” said the report.
Last year we saw Intel purchase the wireless division of Infineon for $1.4bn to obtain the 4G baseband and RF technology.
Another change saw Nokia transfer its baseband design team to Renesas for $200m.
“This indicated that a majority of Nokia basebands in 4G era would be supplied by Renesas,” said the report.
“With the GPU centring on Atom, Intel can make the core processors of smart phones and hence compete with Qualcomm. Engaged in GPU sector for years, Intel enjoys outstanding experience and technologies and it is the biggest shareholder of Imagination Technologies,” said the report.
The GPU IP core of Imagination Technologies is the PowerVR series which are employed in every generation iPhones and iPads.
TI’s OMAPs after 3 series, the APE5R of Renesas, and NGP of Sony all use PowerVR as GPU IP core.
This year saw graphics processor specialist NVIDIA continue its momentum in the tablet PC market and it acquired Bristol-based Icera, the developer of baseband chips.
“In the future, NVIDIA will share a similar development strategy with Intel to integrate the baseband chips in Tegra processor, enhance the competitiveness in smart phone market, and help the mobile phone/tablet PC manufacturers to reduce R&D difficulties and manufacturing cost,” concluded the report.