Samsung to use Sandbridge Technologies wireless chips

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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