Half size

Measuring 11mm2 in silicon size, the BC7830 includes GPS, Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR, FM transit and receive technologies and support for Bluetooth low energy on a single chip. The integration is made possible by specifically designing a chip to support multiple radio technologies. In addition, CSR provides small silicon radio designs for any given process geometry node. CSR’s senior vice president, handset business unit, said: “If we analyse the connectivity growth in handsets, we see the attach rates of Bluetooth, FM and GPS as some of the highest in the mobile handset market. By integrating these three features together in the industry’s smallest device, CSR allows manufacturers to include additional functionality in their devices without sacrificing cost or board space.” Raj Gawera, CSR’s vice president marketing, handset business unit, added: “Building radio chips on a cmos process is one of the toughest technical challenges in the semiconductor industry. Due to the analogue circuitry, shrinking the size of those chips needs to go beyond the benefits that Moore’s Law can provide. The only way to achieve radical size reduction, and therefore cost reduction, is to have deep innovation at an architectural level – this is what we have achieved through our ‘smart integration’ strategy.” CSR will be providing the first public demonstrations of BC7830 at Mobile World Congress, February 16th – 19th.