Research and Markets has announced the addition of Mobile Phone Application Processor Study, 2005-2006 to their offering.
Since 2.5G, mobile phones have gradually evolved into a multifunctional platform with video, data, entertainment, commerce and payment functions, instead of providing voice service only.
In the 3G era, the speed-up of the network operation has proved to be a stimulus to multimedia application. The baseband processor has failed to satisfy the needs of the increasing multimedia applications. It would take a tremendous workload and long-term development if using baseband processors to fulfill such tasks. Thus, the multimedia application processor has emerged as mobile phones become fast consumables.
Entering into the multimedia application processor field is much easier than entering that of the baseband processor. When it comes to baseband processors, many factors must be considered, such as years of experience in the operating communication protocol stack, power consumption, cost and volume; and the higher patent fees, large amount of manpower and financial input for R&D, which the medium and small enterprises can hardly afford. However, there are many enterprises armed with video decoding and 3D acceleration technology (basic knowledge needed for the multimedia application processor); and the investment of manpower and financial support is much less. Whereas the market scale of cell phones has reached more than 0.7 billion units, showing a very promising prospect.
The additional application ranges of future cell phones, not limited to multimedia, but also consisting of Wi-Fi, UWB, A-GPS, bluetooth, ultrared, 3D game, e-payment, security and so forth, and the emergence of such applications gave rise to the application processor. The fact that the application processor must cater to the widespread application of cell phones is determined by the volume of cell phones. The application processor with single function has no future. Early examples usually worked as camera control or signal disposing, and then, music, short film shooting, TV application, etc. At the same time, many low-end applications are integrated into the baseband processor.
Application processor demand includes the following 5 facets:
- Performance, including multimedia processing and multi-task implementing performance.
- Cost, including chip cost, EMS memory cost and consumption.
- Power consumption, including standby time and operation time consumption.
- Enlargement, performance dynamic allowance, developing-style operating system and supporting JAVA.
- Application development, compatibility between hardware and software, the third party support, designing tools and support, services.
Application processors can be divided into 3 groups in terms of design: one is array processors with a single ARM kernel; another is ARM kernels with DSP; and the last one is gate-level logic circuit design. In addition, there are fewer manufactures applying RISC structure.
The greatest merit of the ARM kernel is its easily constructed operation platform and excellent performance, while its demerit is that the ratio of performance to power consumption is inferior to DSP. Consequently, operation units with ARM kernel fits interlink with up-class software so as to control multi-devices of cell phones easily, while DSP suits the operation of the fixed model. The performance of ARM has much to do with the operation frequency, so that if you want a more powerful performance, frequency must be improved which in turn leads to increased power consumption. The kernel of TMS320C55x DSP, used in multimedia processor by Texas Instruments, has much higher efficiency than that of ARM11.
HI-BIT DSP takes a long period of development and needs a large amount of manpower and money, for that reason, no medium or small-sized enterprises look to develop HI-BIT DSP alone. Therefore, the array processor with ARM kernel is widely used. Display card makers have gathered plenty of experiences in graphic processing that can design multimedia application processors by gate-level logic circuit.
As for China's cell phone market, the majority of makers are in the red, and cutting costs is the key factor domestic manufacturers pay more attention to. Mediatek has gained a great market share by low cost. Yet Texas Instruments, Philips and Freescale are chip suppliers of leading cell phone makers (imported brands), and when attempting to tap into the Chinese market, they have to think of how to compete with Mediatek - a powerful and sophisticated rival support ed by UMC - or they may lose their market for good.
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