16 February 2008

Freescale, S60, Symbian to Enhance
3G MXC Reference Design!

Freescale Semiconductor continues to enhance the first 3G mobile phone reference design using Freescale's Mobile eXtreme Convergence (MXC) architecture combined with S60 and Symbian OS. Based on a significant joint investment, the collaboration offers both mature and newly introduced reference design solutions, which reduce cost and time-to-market.

Freescale, Nokia and Symbian created the first HSDPA mobile phone reference design using Freescale's MXC. The reference design has developed into a mature solution addressing upper low-tier and mid-tier 3G market segments.

The solution, running both S60 3rd Edition Feature Packs 1 and Feature Packs 2 on Symbian OS, has the ability to reduce device development time by up to 50 percent. The reference design is based on Freescale's MXC architecture, which integrates an applications processor in the baseband while maintaining clean separation from the modem. This eliminates an extra processor and a second memory subsystem, therefore enabling low-cost designs.

In addition to the ongoing improvement of the existing 3G MXC reference design, Freescale plans to offer design enhancements and cost reductions with the newly introduced fully integrated RFCMOS 90nm radio reference design. Continuing their collaboration on these designs, Freescale, Nokia and Symbian are targeting to run S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 and upcoming editions of S60 on Symbian OS.

"We are proud to collaborate with Symbian and Nokia to make life easier for our OEM's engineering teams," said Tom Deitrich, senior vice president and general manager of Freescale's Cellular Products Group. "Our MXC architecture allows them to provide more high-end multimedia features desired by consumers with a low bill of materials, fewer parts, lower power consumption and greater performance."

"The collaboration with Freescale and Symbian has been characterized by continued effort to increase efficiency. The reference design approach reduces time-to-market and R&D resources needed for phone projects. This enables our customers to introduce S60 devices with advanced capabilities for better Internet experiences," said Matti Vänskä, vice president, Mobile Software Sales and Marketing, Nokia.

"We are delighted with the cost reductions in handset development that the single core modem reference design offers our customers," said Jorgen Behrens, executive vice-president, Marketing, Symbian. "Together with Freescale and S60, Symbian is responding to a requirement to reduce handset development cost while pushing into mass market segments."