Qualcomm's Mirasol may have a reprieve

Qualcomm last year said it was not pursuing direct sales of it's colour e-ink solution Mirasol and would license the technology to partners.

Mirasol uses MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems) technology and is very low power, works in direct sunlight and low light conditions though it has been criticised for washed out colours.

At the SID Display Week event in Canada last week, Qualcomm seems to have reversed its decision and was very publicly displaying the latest version of the Mirasol technology and said it could appear in devices with small screens later this year (less than 1.5 inches - speculation is on some form of smart watch).

There was also a demonstration of a 5.1 inch screen with a resolution of 2560x1440 which equates to a pixels per inch (ppi) value of 577, while Samsung's Galaxy S4 has a resolution of 1920x1080 with a ppi of 440.

The Mirasol technology is really nice and it would be a shame if Qualcomm didn't maximise its market position and push the technology out soon.

Ofcom announces Whitespace trial

Ofcom the super regulator is planning to hold a Whitespace trial later in the year. Whitespace is just spectrum that is not used in certain areas as it may interfere with other services in neighbouring areas (such as TV station broadcasts, the country is divided into areas such that neighbouring TV broadcasting transmitters don't use the same frequencies as their neighbours).

The unused spectrum is therefore 'wasted', but with careful management, can be used for localised services such as wireless broadband.

Neul is a technology leader based out of Cambridge (spun out of Cambridge Silicon Radio or CSR, now owned by Samsung) and already have systems available to use whitespace frequencies. Neul even have a chipset available for end-user devices.

There are (and have been) several whitespace trials, but these have been limited to localised technology trials.

One of the features that is required for whitespace to work is a centralised database of locations, frequencies and power levels. Generally there will be a central base station which will have to contact the database and report its position and it can then use that information to select the frequencies and power levels to use. End-user devices will just scan the whitespace bands and look for a carrier and can just use that as a base, from which it can then retrieve information about what other frequencies to use.

A quirk of the system is that Ofcom has mandated a kill switch so that if interference with commercial TV or other is found, all devices using whitespace can be shut-off in an area.

Ofcom has not specified how the database should be implemented, just the queries and responses that should be supported, it will be up to the market to decide how to implement. Database operators will be able to charge for running the service (again not specified, but it may be based on queries of the database).

This trial will again test the technology but also database implementations etc.

Ofcom's statement is on-line and any interested party wishing to take place in the trial can email TV.WhiteSpaces@ofcom.org.uk

NVidia delays Tegra4 and revenues will be "flat"

NVidia the chipmaker famed for its high performance graphics cards and now low power Tegra smartphone chips has delayed the introduction of the Tegra4 for about 3 months so it can ensure the integrated LTE is fully ready (in the Tegra4i version). The Tegra3 is used is tablets like Google's Nexus 7.

LTE is seen as a must have for next generation tablets and integrated on to the CPU rather than a separate radio chip.

The delay will give Qualcomm who are already market leaders in the integrated CPU market with their Snapdragon series of cores - and they already have a 4 core chip on the market which will be used in high-end devices like Samsung's Galaxy S4 (in Europe at least).

Though NVidia has been reasonably successful with its Tegra3 chip, it's been a difficult journey with them having to make significant re-designs along the way to fix design issues with the chip. Getting the Tegra4i right will mean long term cost savings.

Apple to drop Samsung for CPUs

Apple's latest iPhone 5 has hit the streets, but what many people don't know is that most of the phone is actually made by Samsung. Samsung fabricate the CPU and make the display and also many of the wireless chips (they used to be made by Cambridge Silicon Radio/CSR, but Samsung acquired their chip division). Apple are moving chip fabrication away from Samsung and their A7 chip will be fabricated by TSMC (or other fab plant), though they may not completely remove themselves from Samsung as they have a production line set-up for the A6. Samsung contributed both design and technology expertise to Apple's earlier CPUs but now much of this expertise has been taken in-house and Apple just require a silicon fab to actually manufacture their new CPUs. The A6 was almost entirely engineered in-house by Apple. This will be a blow to Samsung as they struggle to fill the production lines at their fabs.

Samsung demonstrates Exynos 5 processor

Samsung has announced its Exynos 5 processor based on an ARM Cortex-A15 design and has 2 cores running up to 1.7GHz using a 32nm process. The ARM Cortex-15 design can actually support up to 16 cores running at 2.5GHz, but Samsung has used a dual design to reduce power consumption for mobile applications. The Exynos 5 also has an ARM Mali T604 graphics processor with four cores supporting a resolution of 2560 x 1600 and can also support stereoscopic 3D. It also supports panel self refresh allowing for lower power as the display will only be refreshed when pixels change. The chip also supports USB 3.0 for high speed data transfers. Samsung expect the chip to be in tablets and other devices in early 2013 and is set to directly compete with Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors (which are already being fabricated using 28mm process).

Samsung gets serious with mobile chips

Samsung is buying the mobile chipset division of Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR) for $310m. This will add Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth chipsets to Samsung's already hefty portfolio as well as 310 employees and the IP. CSR was formed in 1998 and went public in 2004 and was one of the 'blue eyed' technology companies that was ahead of its time and it dominated the world of Bluetooth followed by GPS and WiFi. Unfortunately in recent times its mobile chipsets haven't been doing so well due to lacklustre sales from partners Nokia and RIM and revenues have fallen by 50% over the last 2 years. Samsung get a "worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive license of CSR's intellectual property rights used in its handset connectivity and location products" which means less royalty payments for them while other handset manufacturers will now have to pay Samsung. Samsung will also get a stronger hold over Apple as they already manufacture the A4 and A5 chipsets, provide some of the retina displays and now own the CSR components used by Apple too. The combined GPS/WiFi/Bluetooth/FM combined chipset market is dominated by Broadcom who control 51% of the market, followed by Texas Instruments (31%), now Samsung play take a bigger role in this $3bn market. Samsung have also taken a 4.9% in the remaining part of CSR.

MeeGo is dead, Long Live Tizen

Intel has decided to drop Meego (the combined efforts of its own Moblin efforts and Nokia's Maemo) in favour of a new Linux mobile OS known as Tizen which comes out of the Linux Foundation and LiMo Foundation.

Tizen will support smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, netbooks and in-vehicle infotainment systems and though Linux based will make use of HTML5 web apps. It will be jointly technically led by Intel and Samsung. Intel will help developers migrate from MeeGo to Tizen.

Samsung has already stated it will open source its BADA operating system in 2012, though it could now sit on top of Tizen.

Both companies hope that it will open up the market to another Linux like operating system that isn't Android thus reduce Google's dominance in the smartphone marketplace.

Samsung drops Symbian

Following on from the announcement by SonyEricsson that it would not be producing anymore handsets based on Symbian to concentrate on Android, Samsung has also announced it's dropping Symbian and will be developing new handsets based on Android and Windows Phone 7.

This must be a blow for Nokia who are still pushing Symbian and hoping that Symbian^3, now open sourced, would be a competitor to Google's Android and Apple's iOS and to some degree Microsoft's WP7 though earlier version of Windows Mobile haven't been too successful.

Nokia have a confused approach and are utilising MeeGo (their joint Linux venture with Intel combining the best features of Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin) as their smartphone operating system, though Symbian^3 also offers smartphone features (though can also be cut down as a dumb OS for cheaper phones).

Though Nokia are still dominant in the phone arena, selling 1.4m phones per day, it's a costly exercise to keep development teams for MeeGo and Symbian when no-one apart from Nokia is using them and Android is becoming the default OS for smartphones (apart from Apple's iOS which they are unlikely to license to other phone vendors).

Maybe Nokia should drop MeeGo, move to Android and admit Google have won and just develop Symbian as a 'dumb' OS for the non smartphone market.

Qualcomm Snapdragons to snap ever faster

In an interview with Hexus by Luis Pineda, SVP of product management for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies, Qualcomm have indicated new versions of the Snapdragon processor (used in mobile devces like the HTC Touch HD2 and Google Nexus One).

Initially the Snapdragon 8X50A will come out which is a more compact version of the chip and lower power, but its speed increases to 1.3GHz, later the8X72 will be introduced which has two cores (ARM Scorpion) and runs at 1.5GHz.

The faster speed CPU's will allow decoding of HD video in 1080p format which will become prevalent on new tablet and slate devices (and high-end mobile phones).

Intel of course are also in the game with new versions of the Atom CPU on the table and it's use in a smartphone. Marvell has announced 4 core ARM chips and NVidia is also boasting multi-core mobile chips, Samsung are also offering their own CPUs.

The mobile market is likely to see more and more powerful 'superphones' (to use a phrase from Google) as computing power will no longer be the issue, now all they need to do is increase the battery life so these super fast devices actually stay alive all day.