By John Walko

EE Times

Feb 16, 2005

CANNES, France — Broadcom Corp. expects to have a version of the dual-mode, quad band WEDGE (WCDMA + EDGE) multimedia platform it introduced at this week`s 3GSM World Congress that has on-chip 802.11 b/g WLAN functionality, within six months.

``That is our next target for this platform, which has all the functionality from our own resources, something that none of the other similar devices can offer``, said Bob Rango, group vice president of Broadcom`s (Irvine, Calif.) mobile and wireless group, in an interview with EE Times.

The first iteration of the platform incorporates an EDGE processor, a W-CDMA co-processor that came through the acquisition last year of Zyray, and the VideoCore multimedia processor that was designed by Alphamosaic Ltd, an even more recent addition to Broadcom`s line-up.

Bluetooth capability is being provided with the Blutonium transceiver and associated Widcomm software.

A new generation of dual-mode protocol stack software is included to integrate the parts together.

The VideoCore2 version of the media processor, optimized for mid-range feature phones and dubbed the BCM2705, also made its first appearance at the show.

Rango said Broadcom already has several large potential customers developing handsets and data products using the platform, and some of these are already in field trials. He said the complete WEDGE platform, including silicon and software, provides the lowest bill of materials cost, lowest power and highest performance of any such 3G solution to date.

The Alphamosaic designed multimedia processor has 8 megapixel digital camera capability, VGA video record and playback at 30 frames per second, 3D graphics and gaming, TV output, a 64-tone polyphonic ringer and MP3 player capabilities.