Motorola subsidiary, Freescale Semiconductor is stepping up the pressure in the battle to control ultra wideband (UWB).

The company today laid out its roadmap for ultra wideband products, which includes plans to deliver three product families over the next year. Freescale made the announcement at the Wireless Connectivity World Expo in Amsterdam.

The new product families include the industry's first 1 gigabit per second product, which will sample in Q1 2005. 

In addition, Freescale said, it will offer a 110 Mbits per second chipset expected to be commercially available in Q3 2004, a 220 Mbits per second two-chip product that will begin sampling in Q4 2004, and a 480 Mbits per second product that will sample in Q1 at the same time as the 1 Gbit per second product.

"Our roadmap lays out an aggressive schedule and puts a stake in the ground for us for customers for competitors and makes ultra wideband real," said Martin Rofheart, director of UWB operations at Freescale.

According to Rofheart, the Motorola subsidiary's release schedule puts it two years ahead of the competition. 

Representatives from Texas Instruments, Intel and several other companies which are pushing a competing standard, would disagree, saying their silicon is due out in time for end user products for Christmas 2005. However, that still places them a year behind Freescale's first release.

In its roadmap announcement, Freescale said its products address the demand for low power, cost effective UWB solutions for application such as media players, digital cameras and camcorders. The product families will also be designed to integrate sophisticated power management tools to help extend battery life, Freescale said.

Rofheart pointed out the Freescale's product families are designed to comply with the Federal Communications Commission's current "Report & Order" regarding UWB, something, which it says its competitors have not yet demonstrated.

"Freescale's are the first commercial products to hit the market," he said. "There is a lot of press on alternative solutions. But we are 2 years ahead in terms of products. We are in a position to grow the market more broadly and more effectively than anyone else."

By: DocMemory
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