Security
Good security is critical for mobile entertainment applications, particularly those that involve over-the-air transactions such as purchasing content or logging onto a private network. Digital rights management (DRM) is an essential security component that must be resolved before copyright holders agree to license or develop mobile content. There must be protection against mobile-device worms and viruses, hackers, spam, spim (instant-message spam) and other modern hazards.

One technical problem with security is closely related to the power problem: Encryption leads to enormous power drain. As security protocols become more complex (and therefore more secure), they need more power during the encryption and decryption processes.

To address this, VLSI engineers have designed processors that have security "baked in" to the chip itself, protecting a device's modem and providing secure communications at the hardware level. For carriers, the architecture provides protection against malicious service attacks and service theft, configuration protection, and cloning. For content providers, it blocks illegal access to licensed content, protecting against unauthorized use and distribution. For consumers, private data is inaccessible, helping protect against identity theft.

Challenging Creativity
As trends in the mobile industry evolve, innovations at the VLSI level need to keep happening. Small form factors of handheld devices and greater performance the ultimate goal are for device manufacturers, as consumers demand more out of their handhelds.

Designing the converged device remains a creator's challenge. People are still more likely to carry several devices for different tasks, such as separate cellular handsets, PDAs and PMPs. Manufacturers and designers have not yet found the magic combination of features and style-call it the Swiss Army entertainment device-that will spark consumers' interest.

Another related issue is miniaturization and integration. Miniaturization is essential to the "mobile" part of mobile entertainment, and highly integrated products help make mobile products smaller and cheaper. The industrial design and ergonomics of entertainment are especially important in mobile devices. Smaller, more integrated components allow OEMs and designers more room to design around the "guts" of a device, and more room to add their own components for new and differentiating applications.

However, the designers have to keep the speed bar going higher with every design iteration, as speed is vital for the users to communicate and interact. This is a challenge that calls for a breakthrough innovation from the VLSI designers pool.

Storage on handheld devices is another challenge. Mobile authors want small, light, rugged, multifunction and multimode devices that they can take anywhere. They also want to be able to seamlessly move the content they create from those portable devices to the Internet, to other devices, to personalized secure networks-in other words, anywhere.

Currently, hard drives on handheld devices can't always keep up with network speeds or content capacity requirements. Users might be able to connect to a wireless network at many hundreds of megabits per second, but there are few hard drives that can "swallow" data at high data rates. This is a problem that will need to be solved before the widespread adoption of high-data-rate mobile services is feasible.

Enabling Business
Semiconductor companies now offer complete system solutions that include all the devices from the baseband through the PA, as well as all of the software. They are also working collaboratively with handset manufacturers' on board layouts. Handset manufacturers are focused primarily on form factor, MMI, plastics and feature/performance definition and feedback. This collaborative model has typically reduced handset time-to-market to 6 months, rather than 12.

Multi-vector technology advances and an evolving design and development model are accelerating the development of next-generation mobile handsets. These trends present significant opportunities for focused semiconductor suppliers who have a comprehensive portfolio of wireless technologies and products.

At the same time, a subtle shift in how semiconductor and handset manufacturers work together is opening up new opportunities for innovation, as semiconductor manufacturers concentrate on platform solutions, while handset manufacturers address higher-level challenges such as software and product differentiation.

Advances in process technology, packaging, system architectures and comprehensive system integration are driving significant new capabilities. As semiconductor companies are reaching a critical mass with wireless telecommunications, the innovation cycle goes up the curve with limitless opportunities ahead.

Malovika Rao
malovikar@cybermedia.co.in