John Glossner : SDR Insider
John Glossner
Sandbridge Technologies CTO & EVP. A fabless semiconductor company building SDR baseband processors.

December 2011

You are browsing the archive for December 2011.

It’s going to be a White (Space) winter after all

December 28, 2011

The FCC has, as expected, granted the first database to Florida-based Spectrum Bridge, who recently completed a set of trials intended to prove the company had the capacity, and the capability, to run such a thing. Those trials didn’t go perfectly, and the FCC expects Spectrum Bridge to address the remaining issues ahead of the [...]

US regulator clears path for ‘super Wi-Fi’

December 25, 2011

US consumers will have access to a new range of “super Wi-Fi” wireless services next year after the Federal Communications Commission removed the final obstacle to the commercial use of the so-called “white spaces” of unused spectrum between broadcast TV channels. Full story at ft.com

RIM Claims It Can’t Find an LTE Chipset, Delays BB10 Half a Year

December 17, 2011

Nomura analyst Stuart Jeffrey in a research note to investors concurred that this could be the end for RIM or at least was a huge hit.  He writes, “We see a high risk that this is too late to turn around RIM’s position and believe the risk of further delays is meaningful.  Even in the [...]

Top Mobile Operators Worldwide

December 16, 2011

List of the top Mobile Operators worldwide: China Mobile 628M SingTel (Singapore) 416M Vodafone (UK) 382M America Movil (Mexico) 236M Telefonica (Spain) 227M At 18. Verizon Wireless 106M Full List at C114.net Hat tip: @Mordyk

Congress, please don’t kill white spaces

December 16, 2011

The spectrum bill that passed the House last night will make any technologist weep. I know the tech community is upset over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), but this bill represents a somewhat geekier threat–killing more unlicensed spectrum. So Silicon Valley may want to get active over this one too. The House version of [...]

Revisiting Supercomputer Architectures

December 15, 2011

The chronology of high performance computing can be divided into “ages” based on the predominant systems architectures for the period. Starting in the late 1970s vector processors dominated HPC. By the end of the next decade massively parallel processors were able to make a play for market leader. For the last half of the 1990s, [...]

SDR Products Cut Design Time And Cost

December 14, 2011

Cognovo and Lime Microsystems have software-defined radio (SDR) chips and kits that can help you bring new wireless gear to market soon. Also, Aglient Technologies is using the Lime chip in its new wireless test system. Source: Mobile Dev & Design

Processors enable global software defined radio platforms

December 13, 2011

The general explosion in available processor power makes SDR interesting for automobile OEMs. First of all, moving radio functions from hardware into software opens up cost benefits for global car production. Secondly, it affords producers flexibility when making decisions about future innovations in the pipeline—such as car-to-X. Nevertheless, pure SDR is still far from being [...]

Lattice Semiconductor Acquires Chipmaker SiliconBlue For $62 Million In Cash

December 9, 2011

Using a single chip ‘Field Programmable Gate Array’ (FPGA) fabric, SiliconBlue’s devices basically enable mobile designers to quickly add features to their mobile platform in areas such as connectivity, memory, storage, sensor management, video and imaging. Full story at Tech Crunch.

Second phase of TD-LTE scale-trial: focus on multi-mode terminal

December 8, 2011

C114 reports that the second phase of TD-LTE scale-trial will start at the end of this year. Liu said, “The second phase of TD-LTE scale-trial will focus on multi-mode terminal,” She also stressed that, “The global development opportunities of TD-LTE have emerged in 2012, and 2012 is still the critical period of TD-LTE development.

Broadcom Breaks Into Top-Five Smartphone Chip Supplier Rankings in Q3 2011

December 6, 2011

Strategy Analytics  released their Q3 2011 global smartphone apps processor market share numbers and based on their estimates, the market grew 59 percent on a year-on-year basis to reach $2.24 billion in Q3 2011. Qualcomm, Samsung, Texas Instruments (TI), Marvell and Broadcom took the top-five places in unit share terms in Q3 2011.

Picochip extends leadership in small cells with next generation silicon

December 6, 2011

picoChip announces the new devices are the first ‘small cell’ optimized system-on-chip (SoC) silicon products in 40nm process node; a move made possible thanks to Picochip’s close working relationship with TSMC. Both the PC3024 and PC3032 offer improved performance from a 1GHz ARM11 processor and by continuing to use Picochip’s field-proven PHY and software, customers [...]

Carrier IQ Logging Software Found on Many Mobile Phones

December 1, 2011

This is really scary! MacRumor reports over the last couple of days, there has been a significant amount of press over the findings of Trevor Eckhart who exposed the presence of extensive logging software found on many Android, BlackBerry and Nokia phones. A video showing the extent of the logging was posted and is summarized [...]