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> What are the challenges in developing modems? Miniaturized, high frequency, low-power, high bandwidth, radio modems to be exact - supporting multiple complex
by tus88 7y ago
> What are the challenges in developing modems?
Miniaturized, high frequency, low-power, high bandwidth, radio modems to be exact - supporting multiple complex protocols. In real-time. Meaning it is all done in hardware, although firmware does some management stuff. It's about as hard as silicon engineering gets.
- ccozan 7y agoThere is more happening in the firmware that you can believe!! ( Disclaimer: I used to work there, could give more details, but NDA )
- 345218435 7y agoevery now and then i see somebody claiming to know more and hinting at deeper things going on with mobile modems, basebands, gsm. then they can‘t say anything because of nda. or the gsm standard manual costs hundreds of dollars. my tin foil hat is glowing, i‘m telling you. we already know that gsm encryption is a joke. i don‘t want to imagine what‘s going on inside all those closed-source baseband firmwares. it creeps me out.
- mytailorisrich 7y agoOnly PHY is in hardware, indeed with firmware control. Then, the protocol stacks on top of that are enormous and complex. The software is very large. Broadcom also tried and failed because they underestimated the task, IMO. Those who can/could make it happen are those who are willing to invest massively over many years and, ideally who have a sure customer. E.g. Huawei who is willing to take the long view and who ships hundreds of millions of phones.
- martinald 7y agoIntel literally spent billions on this effort and Apple was desperate to use them to avoid being reliant on Qualcomm - and still failed.
- mytailorisrich 7y agoBroadcom had spent billions as well... and yet their teams were still too small, and not up to the task.
- selectodude 7y agoApple’s quarterly revenue is larger than Qualcomm’s market cap. This is clearly about more than the money for them. I wouldn’t be shocked if they spent 10bn and poached away half of Qualcomm’s best engineers. They’ve already been on a hiring spree and opened a pretty nice office down in San Diego.
- obliviousonions 7y agoyup. Office is literally 5 minutes away from from Qualcomm, so no problems with the commute, and I'm sure they would be willing to pay much more than Qualcomm. Only thing is the patents. Qualcomms real value is in the crazy amount of R&D they do, and the patents they have to show for it.
- varshithr 7y agoForgive me if I am wrong but it does look like the stuff Intel would be good at.