Parallel processing is not only useful in improving the power efficiency of processors, parallel thought can sometimes help when working what is going on in the electronics industry.
For example, take Qualcomm's recent demonstration of Google's Android operating system running on its Snapdragon chipset.
What makes this interesting is what is going on inside the Apple iPhone.
Mainstream mobile phone design used to be a predictable affair. The designer would choose a baseband processor and even a media processor from Qualcomm or TI to sit alongside the ARM processor, RF chips, memory and interface logic.
But that has changed. In the iPhone the baseband processing is carried out by third-party DSP IP running on a system-on-chip device.
In the case of the iPhone it is Infineon silicon running DSP IP developed by Ceva, but ST-NXP Wireless is also using the same approach in its handset silicon products.
The arguments are that the DSP approach is more cost effective and flexible than bespoke baseband chipsets. And Nokia could soon be using a similar approach for baseband.
The result is that the mobile phone silicon market is changing in a way which could increase the competition for traditional suppliers such as Qualcomm and TI.
No surprise then that TI said in October that it was looking to exit the baseband chipset market.
TI has clearly seen how the thinking of handset developers is changing with respect to the design of baseband processors and it decided to focus on its strengths in the mobile multimedia processors of its OMAP platform.
So Qualcomm's new interest in open-source operating systems and Android in particular is interesting.
It reflects a widening of the chip supplier's options when trying to maintain its strong position in the handset business in the face of the DSP-based baseband challenge.
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