By Stephen Las Marias, Group Editor, Online
Rick Clucas, CEO of Coresonic, discussed with ECN Asia some of the latest developments in his company, including the first wireless modem hardware solutions with WiMAX "personality pack”. He also gave his insights on the WiMAX ecosystem development in Asia. Excerpts:
What were the major changes that have occurred in the WiMAX chipset technology during the past 12 months, and how did Coresonic address these challenges?
I think we are creating the change, rather than addressing them. We have a technology, which is considerably smaller and lower-power than any other solutions we have come across in the market. But also I think, and this is something what we believe is quite fundamentally different, that by offering it as a semiconductor IP rather than it being a WiMAX chip, we are starting to open up opportunities for non-traditional devices to be WiMAX-enabled.
And that’s where we feel a significant growth—there’s no market yet, so it’s going to be growth. I think that in five years’ time, the vast majority of WiMAX-enabled devices will not be what they are today, which are primarily attachments to PC. I think it is going to be the non-PC world such as digital cameras, where you can upload directly online your high-resolution photos—those sorts of applications are where the opportunities are. And by offering the smallest, low-power solution for WiMAX in a way that they can incorporate them into their chipsets, we create an opportunity for them to add value to their products.
Also, more importantly for us, it’s a do-or-die scenario: people in those segments will have to do it or they die. This is a great position to be when you are supplying a technology.
Please tell us about your Leocore technology and the “personality pack”.
One of the things that people don’t do anymore is buying technology for technology’s sake. Every year, the pressure is on companies to deliver products quicker and cheaper; so they look for solutions to the problem, rather than finding the technology that is really the solution.
What we decided to do was to package a technology out with the right bits for different standards. The Leocore baseband processor technology is a generic technology with a modular architecture. It is absolutely ideal for WiMAX, but it can do many other standards as well. A good example will be digital media streaming: mobile TV technologies like DVB-H in Europe, ISDB-T in Japan, T-DMB in Korea—using Leocore, they can do that as well.
Depending on what it is that you are doing, you will want more or less of various things. So to make it easy for designers, we’ve created the “personality pack”. The pack performs everything from ADC/DAC interface to FEC, digital front-end signal conditioning, synchronization, MIMO channel estimation/compensation, error correction and chase combing. All blocks provided enable a complete solution from the RF interface to interfacing to a CPU to run the MAC layer. The first one that we’ve done is for WiMAX because we see that as a key driver at the moment.
How do you see the WiMAX ecosystem developing in Asia?
I think Asia is one of the leading markets in this. India is a good example of where a lot of people are looking at it as a way of getting broadband access to the masses. Japan has already such a good structure anyway, and so does Korea to the large extent.
While Western Europe and the USA may be PC and mobile phone centric, Asia is really going to be the key market for adoption of connectivity in a much wider range of consumer devices. This is the market where we will see literally anything with a display being a potential application for using WiMAX.
What is the impact of Asia’s emerging markets on device strategy?
Volume, I think, is the impact. The thing that will make it succeed quicker is having technology at cheap price points. When you look at the emerging markets in Asia, prices and installation issues are the reason for having wireless infrastructures because they are cheaper than putting in a physical infrastructure. The cheaper you can get that, the bigger the uptake is going to be. So I think the emerging markets create the opportunity, where the volumes get to lower the prices.
However, I think having the better technology offsets that opportunity. If you look at adding this technology into an existing device, wherein the incremental cost is quite negligible, it can become ubiquitous, from the devices point of view, and that will help take up things.
What do you think are the key trends that will take shape in the industry?
I think from a hardware point of view, it’s going to be a programmable solution. If it is not, its life will definitely be short because that is not going to provide the solution that people are looking for.
What do you think are the most important challenges facing WiMAX chip providers, in the next 18 months?
The biggest challenge for WiMAX chips suppliers is that: is the market actually chips? There is a market for WiMAX, but I think the main markets are chips that do something else, but have WiMAX in them. That will be a challenge.
The only area where you are going to see pure WiMAX chipsets will be data cards. But I think very quickly data cards are going to be a thing of the past, because the next generation Centrino chipsets, for instance, are going to have WiMAX built in.
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