Samsung to use Sandbridge Technologies wireless chips

February 16, 2009 | Dean Takahashi | Comments | |

Moving ahead on its next-generation wireless chips, Sandbridge Technologies said today that it has cut a deal with Samsung Electronics, which plans to use Sandbridge’s chips in next-generation cell phones featuring high-speed data connectivity.

Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Sandbridge has pioneered a series of SB3500 baseband processors that do software defined radio. That is, the chips can adapt on the fly to handling a variety of different radio signals. Hence, a single chip is all you need to handle a variety of different wireless protocols. Accordingly, it can be used in a phone that can get reception in any part of the world. The Sandbridge chips can handle eight different wireless protocols at once. It is kind of a Holy Grail wireless chip, since software-defined radio has been tried for many years without success.

In the past, chips have been unable to overcome big interference, heat and performance issues. But one of the big advantages of Sandbridge is that it combines what used to be multiple chips in a world phone into a single radio chip. That saves on both cost and space.

This distinction could make it an ideal next-generation WiMax protocol phone or LTE (Long Term Evolution) phone. Both of those protocols will be used in so-called 4G phones that can access data at high speeds. The Sandbridge chips could also be used to run a variety of software applications. Samsung new smartphone will use the Sandbrige chip in one of several new LTE smart phones, according to Byung Duck Cho, executive vice president at Samsung’s TN Group.

A wide range of chip makers are trying to make next-generation cell phone chips, including Intel, Texas Instruments and Wavesat. Usually, new technologies such as LTE get started via data cards that you can plug into phones or computers. But the Sandbridge technology is so compact that it enables the LTE capability within the handsets themselves. The Samsung handset is expected to be fully compliant with the latest LTE specification.

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About the Author, Dean Takahashi

Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Excellent! Thanks for doing this...it's really nice to know that I'm not alone on a lot of these things.
  • RK
    Dean,

    This is like a FPGA play on the handset side, the moment LTE is solidified, this SW based SDR thingy is gone!! Also Samsung has money into these guys, so they will try it out until their handset hits volume. Sandbridge has good tech etc... but not sure about there market, Handset baseband market is crowded with gaints such as Qualcomm, BRCM, Infineon ST Micro and others... Also there is nothing holygrail about this, this sort of stuff is being done on basestation side using FPGA's, Multicores for years now. Tallwood needs to go retire!
    RK
  • muckraker
    this is a true disruption for the industry. it changes everything...multi-mode requires that the world move in this direction. highly optimized for baseband, multi-core, multi-threaded reprogrammable dsp with high level "c" compiler is wicked and could be a giant killer. sandbridge may or may not succeed, but the trend is inevitable. predict google + this technology embedded in next-gen smartphones will completely alter the mobile landscape.