Texas Instruments told Reuters recently that it is closing in on one of its primary goals: creating a single chip that can handle all the functions of a mobile phone.
As it stands now, the radio chips take up about half the space on the circuit board in a mobile phone. Combining all these into a single chip will either allow wireless device makers to create much smaller devices, or add in new additional features, like Wi-Fi or GPS.
"We simply can't live with the kind of (cell phone) radio form factors we have today and provide the kind of complete system product customers want to buy," the head of R&D in TI's wireless unit told Reuters. "Because the radio is smaller ... it gives the system designer more options."
The company also says the new chip will use half the power.
TI hopes to have the phone-on-a-chip available by the end of this year. Next year, it hopes to do the same thing with Wi-Fi and other wireless protocols.
Current TI processors are used in a variety of models, like the palmOne Treo 600 and Tungsten E, plus the Motorola MPx200 smart phone.
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