Nanotech - The Circuits Blog

ARM, the company that designs chips for the world's smartphones, said handset makers will deliver the first models using more than one processor core next year, as high-end mobile phones begin to mimic the hardware attributes of PCs.

Palm Pre

(Credit: Palm )

And that means top smartphone suppliers such as Apple and Palm, which both use ARM-based processors, will likely deliver models packing at least two cores inside the main processor--referred to as an application (or applications) processor.

This is a natural progression for high-end smartphones like the iPhone and Palm Pre as the software those phones run gets increasingly sophisticated.

"You'll definitely see handsets shipping with a dual-core A9 in 2010," James Bruce, wireless segment manager for ARM, said in a phone interview earlier this week, referring to the next-generation Cortex-A9 processor from ARM.

The Palm Pre uses a processor based on the current-generation Cortex A8. The iPhone also uses an Apple-branded chip that is based on an ARM design.

"The A8 is just a single core while the A9 will be dual-core, all the way up to quad-core to give smartphones an even bigger performance boost," Bruce said.

He said the move to dual-core phones should happen relatively quickly. "It's very aggressive. It's only going to be in a year's time that you're going to get these phones," he said.

And what about power consumption, a critical concern for smartphones looking to deliver all-day battery life? "What we've done on the A9 is actually make it more power efficient than the A8. The dual-core A9 will be coming out on 45-nanometer rather than the (current) 65-nanometer process," Bruce said. Generally, the smaller the geometries, the faster and more power-efficient the processor is.

Bruce continued. "With the dual-core running at maximum load there's probably going to be an increase of about 10 to 20 percent in power consumption but in general day to day use you're actually going to see better battery life."

Texas Instruments raised its outlook for the second quarter Monday, as analog chips and processors for high-end smartphones like the Palm Pre drive sales.

A Texas Instruments processor is the brain inside the Palm Pre

(Credit: Palm)

In a "scheduled update" to its business outlook for the second quarter of 2009, TI said Monday that it expects revenue of between $2.30 and $2.50 billion, compared with the prior estimate of between $1.95 and $2.40 billion. Earnings per share is now expected to be between $0.14 to $0.22, compared with the previous estimate of between $0.01 and $0.15.

Though analog chips are the biggest driver of sequential growth, TI is also seeing a bump in sales of its application processors that go into smartphones such as the Palm Pre. TI's 600MHz OMAP 3430 processor is the brain inside the Pre. The chipmaker also supplies power management, audio, and USB silicon for the Pre.

"Orders were strong in April and May," said Ron Slaymaker, vice president and head of investor relations at TI, in a conference call on Monday afternoon. "We see strength in smartphones--the high-end segment of the market," he said.

And Sprint Nextel executives said Monday that the launch of the Palm Pre on Saturday hit a new sales record for the company. More good news for TI.

The competition to get silicon into the latest and greatest smartphone and mobile Internet device is severe. TI vies for silicon real estate with Samsung, Qualcomm, and Marvell. And the field is getting increasingly crowded: PC industry heavyweights Intel and Nvidia are focusing their considerable resources on the market. Intel, the largest chipmaker in the world, clearly wants to be a major player in the smartphone market by 2011.

And Apple is in the business, too. Though Apple would like it if the iPhone remained a black box (it doesn't matter what's inside, it's the Apple brand on the outside that matters), it is involved in the design of the processors inside its iPhones, according to analysts. The processor inside the iPhone is supplied by Samsung, but branded as an Apple chip.

The TI chip in the Pre is a superscalar design based on the Cortex-A8 core from U.K.-based ARM. The 3430 features "a dedicated level-2 cache and execution of up to twice as many instructions per clock cycle" over previous chips, according to TI documentation. It also integrates a Powervr SGX 2D/3D graphics accelerator.

Texas Instruments sent out a little reminder on Monday that it won't be a cakewalk into the smartphone market for newcomers Intel and Nvidia.

While Intel announced LG Electronics as its first smartphone customer and Nvidia hawks its initial mobile phone technology platforms to prospective customers, TI continues to upgrade its arsenal of ARM-design-based processors, which have been shipping for years to cell phone customers. (Samsung and Palm--and the latter's newest Palm Pre--are among TI's customers.)

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday, TI announced a new OMAP 4 mobile chip platform that will allow smartphones to do 1080p video record and playback and integrate 20-megapixel cameras. TI claims the OMAP 4 will deliver 10-times-faster Web page loading times, more than 7 times higher computing performance, and 10 times better graphics performance than its current OMAP processors.

The OMAP 4 processor is based on the dual-core ARM Cortex A9 MPCore supporting symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) and capable of speeds of more than 1GHz per core, according to TI. Basic ARM processor designs are licensed by U.K.-based ARM Holdings to companies like Texas Instruments and Qualcomm that tweak the design and then manufacture the chip.

OMAP 4 platform and development tools are expected to sample in the second half of 2009, with production expected by the second half of 2010.

TI also said Monday that it is adding to the OMAP 3 family with silicon based on 45-nanometer processor technology. (Intel is also using 45-nanometer manufacturing technology for its upcoming Moorestown smartphone chip.)

The OMAP36x series will run at speeds up to 1GHz, offer a dedicated graphics hardware accelerator for 3D gaming, and support 720p high-definition video recording and playback and 12-megapixel cameras.

The silicon is scheduled to sample in the third quarter.

Updated at 4:00 p.m. PST throughout

Texas Instruments posted a sharp drop in profit as it looks to cut 12 percent of its workforce.

TI's fourth-quarter profit fell 86 percent to $107 million, or 8 cents a share, from $756 million in the same period last year, or 54 cents a share. Excluding restructuring charges, TI had earnings of 21 cents a share, exceeding the 12 cents forecast by Wall Street analysts.

Revenue was $2.49 billion, down 30 percent, from $3.56 billion last year. The company also warned that revenue in the first quarter would drop further.

TI, which was ranked the No. 3 chipmaker worldwide in revenue by iSuppli in 2008, said it was cutting 12 percent of its workforce, which includes 1,800 layoffs and 1,600 voluntary departures.

TI's job cuts follow Intel, which said its shuttering of plants would affect more than 5,000 employees, and Advanced Micro Devices, which said it would cut 1,100 jobs.

"We are not counting on a near-term economic rebound for improvement," said Rich Templeton, TI chairman, president and chief executive officer, in a statement.

Charges for workforce reductions will be about $300 million, TI said. Annualized savings from these reductions, plus those announced in October for the restructuring of the company's Wireless business, will be about $700 million after all reductions are complete in the third quarter of 2009, the company said.

Other highlights:

• Orders were $1.86 billion in the fourth quarter, down 47 percent from a year ago
  
• Inventory was reduced by $200 million in the quarter
  
• Capital expenditures were $76 million in the quarter, a decline from $181 million in 2007
  
• For the first quarter of 2009 TI expects revenue of between $1.62 billion and $2.12 billion
  
• For the first quarter of 2009 TI expects EPS of between $0.11 loss and $0.03 profit
  

Jack Kilby

Texas Instruments commemorated the 50th anniversary of the integrated circuit with the opening Friday of Kilby Labs, honoring Jack Kilby, the Nobel-prize-winning inventor of the seminal electronic device.

As a new TI employee in 1958, Kilby was forced to work during the traditional company summer vacation. During that time, he built the first integrated circuit, now the basic building block of everything from 3G cell phones to supercomputers.

The first IC was crude: a sliver of germanium with protruding wires glued to a glass slide (see image below). When Kilby applied electricity to the circuit, "an unending sine wave undulated across his oscilloscope screen. In that instant...he had successfully integrated all of the parts of an electronic circuit onto a single device made from the same semiconductor material," according to TI's Web site.

The first integrated circuit built by Jack Kilby

(Credit: Texas Instruments)

Robert Noyce, who co-founded Intel, also created an integrated circuit, about six months after Kilby. At that time, Noyce was at Fairchild Semiconductor (which he also co-founded). Noyce's chip, made of silicon, overcame some practical problems that Kilby's germanium-based device did not.

Kilby won the inventor's "Triple Crown": the Nobel Prize in physics; the National Medal of Science; and the National Medal of Technology. He held more than 60 patents including one for the portable electronic calculator, which TI invented in 1967. He died in 2005 at the age of 81 after a battle with cancer.

Kilby was one of the co-inventors of the electronic calculator

(Credit: Texas Instruments)

Kilby Labs will be located on TI's Dallas North Campus, where Kilby first designed the chip. The new facility will bring together university researchers and leading TI engineers to discover new ways to use the IC--"from creating new ways to make health care more mobile to harnessing new power sources to enabling more fuel-efficient vehicles," TI said.

TI has named Ajith Amerasekera as director of the labs. Amerasekera, who is a TI fellow, joined the company in 1991 and holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and physics.

At TI's headquarters, the original lab where Kilby worked and made his discovery of the first integrated circuit has been re-created on-site. TI has also made a donation toward Jack Kilby's memorial statue in his hometown of Great Bend, Kan.