Samsung has developed a tiny System-On-Chip (SoC) design featuring an ARM CPU, ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless connection, memory controller, and flash memory that’ll start appearing in the next few months inside cameras and mobile phones.
It’ll then expand to printers, projectors, storage devices, and even monitors and speakers. According to a company press release:
“For example, without any cable connection, consumers can directly send photos from their digital cameras to their PC or view them instantly on their TV. Consumers can directly connect their MP3 players to high-quality surround speakers and listen to their favorite music. Also, multi-media data can be shared among mobile phones through a peer-to-peer network without a host computer.”
While wireless USB isn’t totally new, it’s cool to see it shrinking down small enough to be included inside handheld consumer gadgets. Power consumption is said to be quite low, too, at just 300 milliwatts so battery life hopefully won’t take too big of a hit. Security has been considered as well, with 128-bit AES encryption factored into the wireless transmissions.
Full press release:
Samsung’s New High-Performance Wireless USB SOC Solution Brings Short-Range Wireless Communications to CE Products
Mobile World Congress 2009
Hall 1, Booth #D33
SEOUL, South Korea–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a worldwide leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced a new wireless universal serial bus (W-USB) System-On-Chip (SoC) designed specifically for the upcoming ultra-wideband (UWB) market. The latest in a growing portfolio of mobile technology solutions, Samsung’s new W-USB SoC combines the convenience of wireless connectivity, the security level of wired USB, and the high speed performance of UWB to instantly transfer mass storage data such as digital photos, movie videos or MP3 music files between electronic devices. For example, the new W-USB SoC can download a 700MB movie in approximately one minute.
Samsung’s suite of advanced products for portable consumer applications will be on display at the Mobile World Congress 2009 in Hall 1, Booth #D33 of the Fira de Barcelona, Montjuic.
“Connected consumer electronic products are the next step in enabling anytime, anywhere access to information and services,” said Dr. Yiwan Wong, vice president, System LSI Division, Samsung Electronics. “One of the keys to wireless connectivity is W-USB technology. While W-USB technology is just beginning to ramp up, its application will soon increase with the consumer electronic and mobile phone markets’ demand for wireless connectivity technology and UWB’s fast download speeds.”
This high-performance chip is expected to be applied to digital cameras and mobile phones and gradually expand to other peripheral electronic devices such as wireless printers, beam projectors, wireless hard disks, wireless displays, and wireless speakers. For example, without any cable connection, consumers can directly send photos from their digital cameras to their PC or view them instantly on their TV. Consumers can directly connect their MP3 players to high-quality surround speakers and listen to their favorite music. Also, multi-media data can be shared among mobile phones through a peer-to-peer network without a host computer.
Using advanced CMOS process technology and 3.1~10.6 GHz-band UWB technology, Samsung’s new W-USB SoC is a single chip solution which features a built-in ARM core, a UWB physical layer, and a memory controller. It also provides an SD card, an MMC, a NAND flash memory, and a high-speed USB 2.0 OTG (On-The-Go) interface without additional logic circuitry.
With the industry’s first built-in embedded memory controller and adoption of Samsung’s proprietary data storage technology, Samsung’s W-USB SoC offers a high throughput, performing at the speed of 480Mbps (megabytes per second). When considering a conventional payload overhead, the average effective data download speed of existing chipsets is around 50Mbps while Samsung’s W-USB SoC can reach up to 120Mbps.
Samsung’s new W-USB SoC utilizes security measures which are seamless with features such as a 128 bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption algorithm and a static signal that makes hacking through wiretapping and signal tracing difficult.
This new SoC maintains a low power consumption of less than 300mW (milliwatt), making it an ideal product for portable electronic devices like mobile phones and digital cameras.
According to the market research analysis firm In-Stat, worldwide W- USB is expected to reach US$22 million this year and increase to US$390 million in 2012, at an annual compound growth rate of over 200 percent.
Samsung’s W-USB SoC is currently sampling and will be in mass production starting in Q2, 2009.