ICs for mobile multimedia communications

The seemingly never-ending advancement of silicon technology has resulted in the emergence of mobile broadband communication systems for voice, data and video transmission with good connectivity and proper quality-of-service. Devices are being fabricated using processes managed at atomic levels, while IC design involves detailed systems engineering, including the incorporation of application content. Data-rate and mobility tradeoffs and different standards like 2G, 3G, Bluetooth, WLAN, GPS and digital-video broadcasting, are leading to multimode requirements and topics such as the coexistence of different technologies must be solved. Beyond all of that, secure data transfer using security checks like encryption is most important for the networked world. All of these various topics are, finally, the reason for the appearance of challenging architectural requirements, such as architectural re-configurability and programmability, motivated by the growing importance of multimode and multistandard solutions. While parameters such as data-rate and algorithmic- and circuit-complexity have changed approximately exponentially with time, there has not been much improvement in the battery capacity. For this reason key considerations for mobile products are energy management and power reduction. In this context, the introduction of platform concepts, including analog and RF at the most practical cost, power-levels and form-factors, are key requirements for system-on-chip and system-in-package solutions for current and future mobile multimedia terminals. This talk will explore current multi-million-transistor ICs with multi-billion operations per second of signal processing, along with analog and RF capabilities for mobile multimedia communications. It will also consider special requirements on wafer processes such as leakage and analog and RF capabilities, and will look at how R&D engineers bridge the world of system-level design, silicon and software. Of course, new challenges going forward will be considered and explored