Smartphone/Mobile Internet Device

The smartphone, Mobile Internet Device (MID) segment is witnessing the fastest growth in the mobile device market. The market segment’s desire for more multimedia-rich content, coinciding with wireless carriers’ desire for broadening their revenue stream has driven the trend for feature integration and technology convergence.

At an architecture level, this trend results in more and more peripherals to be connected to the application processors that run the operating system (OS) and application software. The need for different screen sizes and form factors has also led to the adoption of high speed serial interfaces like MDDI and MIPI.

Unfortunately, application processors have a predefined set of interfaces and typically cannot be modified as fast as these market requirements change. The displays used in these phones also do not have the serial interfaces connecting to the processors and are mostly RGB displays.

To solve this dilemma, QuickLogic has developed a broad variety of host controllers around storage, networking, video and other high speed peripherals such as USB 2.0 OTG with PHY, SD/SDIO/MMC, IDE, CE-ATA, NAND/Managed NAND, High Speed UARTs, and PCI. QuickLogic has also developed ArcticLink® II VX4C solution platform especially for this segment to connect to the processors and displays.

Challenges

• Demand for multiple high speed wireless interfaces for data synchronization, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, Mobile TV impacting performance and battery life
• Poor image quality and requirement for increasing backlight reduces battery life
• Displays in smartphones are RGB but Qualcomm processors have MDDI as the high speed serial interface
• Additional storage requirements within handset, driven by multimedia applications and office automation tools.

Solution

• QuickLogic provides both Hi-Speed USB 2.0 and SDIO for high speed data interface for wired and wireless connectivity
• Visual Enhancement Engine technology (VEE™) to improve picture quality and save battery life by lowering backlight requirements when watching video and Mobile TV
• ArcticLink II VX4C solution platform provides an ideal platform to implement CSSP solutions in the display subsystems
• QuickLogic supports a broad spectrum of storage choices including high capacity SIM cards SD/SDHC/MMC cards and Managed NAND with booting capability