John Walko

EE Times

(02/08/2006 7:53 AM EST)

LONDON — PortalPlayer Inc. is working separately with two U.K. wireless chip specialists, Icera and CSR, on connected multimedia devices and players.

The design partnership with Icera (Bristol, England) is centred round a platform that will use Icera’s HSDPA modem and processor core.

The company has been supplying the 3G processor, dubbed the Livanto DXP – for deep execution processor -- to select but un-named customers since September 2005.

Livanto supports the kinds of algorithms used in high-speed communications while retaining software programmability without sacrificing power efficiency. The core allows the processor to continue to be used as additional interface standards are brought onboard 3G mobile phone handsets and for future wireless standards for next generation multimode wireless terminals and handsets.

The processor supports HSDPA ((High Speed Downlink Packet Access) in software through a combination of conventional processing, SIMD extensions and long instruction word processing.

Both Icera and PortalPlayer (San Jose, Calif.) which specializes in semiconductors, firmware and software for media players, will be highlighting the design at the 3GSM World Congress that takes place February 13 to 17 in Barcelona, Spain.

The design partnership is only the second announced by Icera for its 3G processors. The company said in February 2005 it is < href=``http://www.eet.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=59301421``target=``_new``> working with TTPcom using the latter`s Release 5 multimode wireless protocol stack, which supports EDGE, W-CDMA and HSDPA standards, and that it would integrate it into its processor.

``Integrating Icera`s wireless soft modem and PortalPlayer`s core media-player technology will help bring to market compelling new products that are very low power and have high-speed, always-on connectivity,`` said Nigel Toon, vice president of marketing at Icera.

The deal with Bluetooth and WLAN chip specialist CSR (Cambridge, England) involves integrating the company’s BlueCore and UniFi technologies into PortalPlayer’s PP5022 applications processor, and working with suppliers of media players to design in the total connectivity package.

The companies will be showing reference designs and demonstrating WiFi connectivity at 3GSM next week. They say the platforms will be available in the second half of 2006.