Your GSM cellphone is about to get even tinier, as Broadcom has found a way to combine for radio modulators onto a single silicon wafer. This means that one tiny, fingernail-sized chip can do what it would take four to do. While it doesn’t sound like much, it could mean a space savings of up to 20% off the top, and likely more later (I guestimated that number, please don’t email me).
The chip is is a 3G transceiver, 2.1 Bluetooth transceiver, FM receiver and FM transmitter, all at the same time. In addition, it features a graphic processor that can quickly handle images from a camera up to 5-Megapixels and TV out at 30FPS. That is a handy feature many next-gen phones will likely start including.
This processor will also be cheaper than using four seperate chips, which means high-end features will find their way to low-end handsets. We like the way that sounds.
Press Release [Broadcom]