Xilinx Chips Enable Next-Generation Video Phone Services

Today's mobile handset market is experiencing a major shift as more and more consumers trade in their PDAs and standard cell phones for new smart phones with many of the same functions in a single streamline package. According to market analysts, these applications are the start of a new stage in the development of worldwide wireless services. IDC, a leading IT market research and advisory firm, predicts total worldwide 3G mobile phone shipments to grow from approximately 34 million units in 2004 to 286 million units in 2008, a compound annual growth rate of 71 percent*.

Xilinx plays an instrumental role in delivering these must-have services to consumers. "Future-proof" programmable base stations, enabled by the chameleon-like characteristics of Xilinx devices, are setting the stage for rapid deployment of these new features. Through remote upgrades, service providers can dramatically extend the base station lifecycle while eliminating the need for costly truck rolls and hardware development. For example, deploying new services and tuning system performance can be easily executed by using a remote software download to reprogram the Xilinx chip to meet the new requirements. For wireless networks consisting of tens of thousands of base stations, operators can benefit from dramatic OPEX savings of at least $10 million per base station network upgrade.

"We have many customers enjoying significant benefits and cost savings from using our programmable devices in their wireless base station networks," said Omid Tahernia, vice president and general manager of the Xilinx DSP Division. "In fact, one customer has upgraded their entire network of over 150,000 base stations year after year by simply downloading new software, saving them hundreds of millions of dollars."

Wireless Base Station Semiconductor Opportunity
Market analysts indicate that the worldwide semiconductor market for wireless base stations is expected to grow from $2.7 billion in 2003 to $5.6 billion in 2008. According to Jordan Selburn, Principal Analyst at iSuppli, the FPGA/CPLD revenue portion of this segment is forecasted to increase from $222 million to $382 million. In 2003, the $27B total wireless base station market was dominated by Alcatel, Ericsson, Lucent, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel and Siemens, which represented nearly 80 percent of the revenues (Source: ABI Research).

"New data services deployments and a rapidly changing roadmap are presenting new challenges to wireless semiconductor solutions providers," said Will Strauss, President and Principal Analyst at Forward Concepts. "Today's wireless base stations require unprecedented levels of flexibility and performance along with aggressive price points and significant power savings. These challenges can be addressed by FPGAs."