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RESEARCH REPORT 6.6.2006

SMART PHONE TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP Authors Jussi Roivainen, Matti Eteläperä, Juha-Pekka Soininen

VTT

Confidentiality Restricted



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Report’s title

Smart Phone Technology RoadmapCustomer, contact person, address Order reference

TEKES

Project name Project number/Short name

Rich model for strategig co-operation in smart phone cluster 3368/ROOSTER1 Author(s) Pages

Jussi Roivainen, Matti Eteläperä, Juha-Pekka Soininen 45/Keywords Report identification code

Smart Phone, roadmap Acceptance

Accepted in Steering Group Meeting 2006-06-05

Summary

Modern mobile phones are complex but versatile products that include

cellular radio, application processing unit and a large set of software.

The freedom of choice in services even after purchasing the device is a

requirement for smart phone users.

Smart phone technologies are in rapid progress and there is a strong

application push behind it. In this report we have covered the main

application requirement trends and scratched the surface of the basic

roadmaps of smart phone related technologies.

The greatest technological challenges will be related to user interfaces.

The shift from device-oriented to service-oriented world is already going-

on. The second major challenge is the efficiency of smart phone platform.

The number of needed communication interfaces is rising and the next

communication standards are extremely complicated.

The success of device has been and will be dependent of the experience that

it gives to the user. Continuously rising computation performance, higher

quality featured HW (cameras, more storage capacity etc.) and moreefficient operating systems and user interfaces are the enablers to develop

interesting applications and attractively designed smart phones.

The purpose of this document is to enlighten the possibilities and

requirements of the platforms for smart phones that the current technology

development views seem to provide.

Confidentiality Restricted

VTT’s contact address

VTT, PO.Box 1100 (Kaitoväylä 1), 90751 Oulu

Distribution (customer and VTT)

Rooster steering group

The use of the name of the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT) in advertising or publication in part of this report is only permissible with written authorisation from the Technical Research Centre of Finland.



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Preface

This report is part of Rooster (R ich Model for Strategic Co-o peration in Smar t Phone Cluster)

project that was an initiative to make the exploitation of smart phone innovations more

efficient. The project was a co-operation project between VTT and University of Oulu and it

was done in 2006-2007.

The project was part of Tekes VAMOS technology programme. It had four work packages:

application development, usability, platform innovations, and management. This report is part

of VTT’s activities in WP1 and WP3.

The project was funded by Tekes, VTT and group of companies. CCC, Elektrobit, Nokia and

TietoEnator were the core companies. Elcoteq, F-Secure, Ouman, Pöyry and JP-Epstar werethe other companies.

Oulu 6.6.2006

Authors



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Contents

1 Introduction 5

2 Application trends 8

2.1 Application type based scenarios 8

2.1.1 Industrial applications 8

2.1.2 Professional applications 11

2.1.3 Entertainment and home applications 122.2 Interface level based classification 14

2.2.1 Web-browser 14

2.2.2 Java 14

2.2.3 User Interface specific services 15

2.2.4 Operating System 15

2.2.5 Application Processing Engine 15

2.2.6 Modem/Interfaces 15

2.2.7 Extended applications 162.3 Application development scenarios 16

3 Smart Phone Technology Forecast 20

3.1 Current status 203.2 Radio modem trends 20

3.2.1 Cellular radios 22

3.2.2 Other radios 22

3.2.3 Modem 233.3 Computation trends 23

3.3.1 Application processors 24

3.3.2 Baseband processors 26

3.3.3 Graphics and video decoding 27

3.3.4 Memory 273.4 Platform service trends 28

3.4.1 Displays 29

3.4.2 Cameras 30

3.4.3 Sound 31

3.4.4 Storage 31

3.4.5 Physical user interfaces 313.5 Operating system trends 32

3.5.1 Symbian 32

3.5.2 Linux 33

3.5.3 PalmSource Access Linux Platform (ALP) 34

3.5.4 SavaJe Platform 35

3.5.5 Windows Mobile 363.6 Application service trends 36



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3.6.1 Macromedia Shockwave 36

3.6.2 Macromedia Flash 37

3.6.3 Java 37

3.6.4 .NET framework 37

3.6.5 AJAX 373.7 Technology and service development scenarios 37

4 Conclusions 41

References 43

Appendix A 44

List of Figures

Figure 1-1. Examples of smart phones: Nokia 9500, N91, N70 and Motorola A780................6Figure 1-2. . Market share of the smart phones........................................................................6

Figure 1-3. Relative market share between multimedia devices...............................................7Figure 2-1. Music phone roadmap ........................................................................................17

Figure 2-2. Industrial smart phone roadmap..........................................................................18Figure 2-3. Office smart phone roadmap...............................................................................18

Figure 2-4. TV –smart phone roadmap..................................................................................19

Figure 2-5. Camera smart phone roadmap.............................................................................19

Figure 3-1. Data speeds of networks. ....................................................................................21Figure 3-2. Projected bitrate evolution for uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) ..........................21

Figure 3-3. Evolution of handheld device processor architectures. ........................................24

Figure 3-4. Handset memory feature evolution between 2004 and 2007................................28

Figure 3-5. The required data speeds for different smart phone display sizes and color

resolutions. ...........................................................................................................................30

Figure 3-6-1. Access Linux Platform stack. ..........................................................................35

Figure 3-7. SavaJe application platform................................................................................35

Figure 3-8. The expected development for flash memory on memory cards and on deviceaccording to the ITRS 2005 edition.......................................................................................40

List of Tables

Table 3-1. Video standard complexity comparison. 24

Table 3-2. Concurrent SoC application processors. 26

Table 3-5. Processing speed requirements in 3-3.9G systems. 27

Table 3-6. Categorizing different Linux approaches for smart phones. 33

Table 3-7. The data speeds of camera sensors with 4:2:0 YUV coding. 39



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1 Introduction

Modern mobile phones are complex but versatile products that include

cellular radio, application processing unit and a large set of software. The

wireless phones can be classified into four categories: cordless phones, basicmobile phones, feature phones and smart phones. Examples of wireless

phones are old DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications)

phones and new VoIP (Voice-over-Internet-Protocol) phones, such as Skype

phones. Basic mobile phones are phones that have only basic voice, SMS

(short message service) and modem applications. The mobile phones thathave more advanced applications such as calendars, games, e-mail, etc. are

either feature phones or smart phones.

In theory, the capability to install new software is the difference between

smart phone and feature phone. In practise this difference is not so clear

because Java programs that are one form of software can be installed also tofeature phones. Often used way to classify a phone to be a smart phone is

that it has Symbian, Linux, Windows Mobile or PalmOS operating system,

but this is not adequate since some Linux or Symbian based phones are

clearly feature phones with fixed set of applications. The hardware can also

be the same in feature phones and smart phones. There are examples where

the models are differentiated with selection and configuration of operating

system and services although the feature phones do have similar hardware to

smart phones. The operator specific service packages are one reason that

complicates this classification.

In this report the smart phone is defined as a mobile phone that has an open

operating system where user can install new applications that can access

directly the services of the phone.

The reason for smart phones existence is that users want the flexibility in

mobile format that they are used to with PCs. The freedom of choice in

services even after purchasing the device is a requirement for smart phone

users. The technical development in semiconductor industry has enabled the

development of smart phones providing adequate computational capabilities

and amount of memory in small and power efficient chips and this

combination is desirable to more and more customers. This has led to a

variety of products with different form factors as shown in Figure 1. Most

common types are miniaturized PC (e.g. Nokia Communicator), PDA

(personal digital assistant) type of phone, folded (clamshell) phone, slide

phone and block (candy bar) phone.



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Figure 1-1. Examples of smart phones: Nokia 9500, N91, N70 and Motorola A780.

Nokia estimated [1] that in year 2005 the world smart phone market was

46.3 million devices while in 2004 it was 20.6 million devices, i.e. growth

was 125 %. Gartner [2] predicts that smart phones grows market share from

5.7 % in 2005 to more than 30 % in 2010. In Japan the market share of smart phones and feature phones was estimated be approximately 100 %

already in 2005 compared world-wide share of 40 % [3].

Figure 1-2. . Market share of the smart phones

Figure 1-2 and Figure 1-3 [4] show how the market for smart phones is

evolving in the near future.



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2005 2007 2009

Voice phones

Feature phones

Browser

phones

Smart phones

Gaming phones

Music phones

Multimedia phones

Wireless PDA

Broadband handsets

TV handsets

100%

50%

0%

Figure 1-3. Relative market share between multimedia devices.

The purpose of this document is to enlighten the possibilities and

requirements of the platforms for smart phones that the current technology

development views seem to provide. This document focuses to smart phones

only and basic and feature phones are not in the scope of this document. The

smart phone is understood in this document as a device with capability to be

used as cellular phone and to be used as a computer where the user can

install new software. It should be noted that smart phones have very wide

range of usage possibilities beyond these two basic requirements.

This document is focused on the digital part of the smart phones. Analogueand mechanical parts are not included in this discussion. Patents and other

intellectual property rights etc. are also out of the scope of this document.



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2 Application trends

The changing application requirements are the main reason for product

development also in smart phone domain. Predicting this kind of changes is

extremely difficult but also extremely rewarding. In this chapter, we try toanalyse the application requirements from two viewpoints. The first part

focuses on the type of applications and the second part on the interface

between the smart phone platform and the application.

2.1 Application type based scenarios

Services are seen as new driver of phone development. The main service

target defines the format of the smart phone to provide convenience and

simplicity for the main application of particular product. Currently some

music specialized phones and smart phones look as much as mp3 player as

they look as phone (Nokia 3250 and N91, Sony-Ericsson W900i). Alsosome phones/smart phones that are on market look like digital camera(Sony-Ericsson K800i, Samsung SCH-S230) or video camera (Nokia N90

and N93 when opened). It is expected that this kind of service basedvariation/differentiation of smart phones will expand to other kind of

services that the smart phones can provide.

The differentiation towards specific applications does not necessarily mean

that these smart phones could not perform other applications. The

differentiation is done by emphasizing those features that are most

important for the aimed task. Like making additional easy user interfaces for

the particular application and using higher quality feature hardware (e.g.music phones have buttons for music play, bigger memory and maybe better

power amplifier for headphones).

2.1.1 Industrial applications

The industrial applications are mostly human interfaces of machine to

machine communications or interfaces to databases. The currently mostly

used industrial applications can be divided as

• Monitoring

• Reporting

• Viewing of documents etc.

• Position and location based applications

Most important product properties that have effect on devices usability in

industrial applications can be listed as

• Larger displays

• Faster cellular connections



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• Fast other radio connections

• Security

•

Long product life-time

The usability of many industrial applications will be much improved with

bigger displays or external displays on wall or video eye-wear (display

glasses). User guides and other assistance tasks will be provided to smart

phone users and the trend is to augmented reality type of approach. Two-way data transfers can be used to send sensor information, video or other

information for processing to other places where that information can be for example compared to databases and this analysis result can be send back to

the smart phone user. This similar information analysis based on database

information can be done also using smart phones own processing and

storage capabilities but of course in smaller scale.

Industrial applications needs fast access to external databases i.e. high

capacity download link. HSDPA (high speed downlink packet access) is

first cellular network that has adequate download capacity for demanding

applications. Also smart phones processing speed has significant meaning in

application which process data from sensors etc. or formats downloaded

data for local needs.

Security is essential in all applications. Industrial applications require

highest security because the information in them are usually most valuable

kind of. This does not mean that security in other kind of applications could be taken less seriously but to emphasize the fact that industrial applications

can have very valuable targets for unauthorized participants. Security

including privacy needs similar approaches as in laptops like virus scanners,firewalls and encryption of memory, storage and transmitted data. Down

side of this approach to security is that all these security applications needsignificant computation capacity. On the other hand, smart phones can help

to get more secure ways of work if use of third party devices can be

avoided.

The information of sensors, sensor networks and other measuring devices

can be monitored using smart phones through high data rate networks.Smart phones can also be used as sensors depending on application

requirements. Sensors can be independent or part of sensor network having

a smart phone as a human interface, for example, when the user is at

distance, when the Bluetooth connection between the sensor/sensor network

and smart phone is possible. On the other hand, the sensors could be part of

wired/wireless industrial network in a factory and the smart phone could

read sensor values using near field communication (NFC). Measuring and

monitoring with smart phones is a possibility to give direct data to user

without heavy laptops or special equipment but for this the sensors should be capable for communication. When sensor values can be read, the next

logical step is to control the system. This is technically feasible today. Thismust be very robust and secure to limit accidental and unauthorised usage of

control possibilities.



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Reporting is in its simplest format one of the easiest industrial application of

smart phones. One example of reporting is to fill a web page query using

smart phones browser. More application specific programs can be

developed to fulfil exact needs but in both approaches the idea is usually to

give predefined forms that the user completes to avoid problems with smalldisplay and limited keypad.

Document viewing is an essential part of industrial applications.

Documentation can be downloaded from central database where documents

can be kept up to date all the time. The documentation must be correctly

formatted for viewing it through limited displays of smart phones. Here for

example external displays, either on wall/desktop or personal video eye-

wear can be an advantage for usability and documentation clarity.

Document viewing is one example of assisting applications. Assistance that

smart phones can provide for industrial applications can be from simplecalculator-program to augmented reality. An example of augmented reality

is ARTESAS project (http://www.artesas.de) where demonstrations of industrial applications of augmented reality were shown at CEBIT 2006.

The demonstrations included car service case where the parts that needservice were recognised from camera picture data and those parts were

highlighted in display to help the mechanics to change or repair correct part.

The hardware in those demonstrations included video eye-wear with video

camera and laptop but in the future similar applications should be

technically possible to be developed for smart phones.

Positioning can be used in industrial, professional and entertainmentapplications. Navigation is already used in transportation to guide and

control the drivers. The technology for smart phones for simple navigation

has been available years although only few phones have had GPS receiver

integrated but a separate receiver must have been connected using

Bluetooth. The bigger technical challenge has been to get a map with

necessary information for particular needs. A bigger display would be beneficial also in navigation but some applications have been successful

using the standard 176x208 pixel display. Other than GPS (and futureGalileo) satellite navigation are in use also. GSM cell-based positioning can

be used for purposes that need less accuracy. Local positioning services can

use short-range techniques like RF-tags that can be used to locate for example containers etc.

Product life-time is one of the biggest challenges. The industrial

applications usually must be usable for decades instead of few years that the

smart phone life cycle is. Usually there will be new needs during the life

time of industrial system and the application must be easy to modify to fulfil

the new and/or changed requirements. Therefore standards and protocols to

be used in all parts of the application implementations must be selected with

strict future proof, maintenance and security requirements.

http://www.artesas.de/





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2.1.2 Professional applications

Professional applications are applications that used for business purposes

but do not actually involve production of devices or services. The main

professional application categories are

• Personal information manager

• Office applications

• Voice over Internet protocol

• Email

Smart phones have had already years included personal informationmanager (PIM) applications like calendar and address book. These can be

edited on computer so many input tasks can be done using more ergonomic

PC-environment. New professional applications are added to smart phones

when the computational performance, interfaces to other devices and

especially human interface allows.

Office applications (text editing, spreadsheet calculation, slideshow

representations) are now mostly with limited editing possibilities (e.g.Quickoffice®) but after user interface will develop then these applications

will be better editable on normal sized smart phones as they now are in

PDA- or Communicator type of smart phones or maybe even better with

wireless connection to external displays and keyboards. One obvious

application is slideshow representations portability i.e. representations can

be given without heavy laptop when display transfer to external displays are

developed. The computational capacity of smart phones has been good

enough for years but video projectors in meeting rooms etc. have usually

only D-SUB type VGA input or DVI input available. That kind of display

connector is not feasible for smart phones because of size and weight but

now some projectors have WLAN capabilities. WLAN or for example

UWB based interfaces should become standard in projector to enable peopleto carry only smart phone without separate laptop in meetings and lectures

etc.

Processing speed is required most in spreadsheet type of applications but of

course all programs benefit of computational speed, as seen with professional PC applications. Especially representation applications needs

output to bigger displays to be usable. Also many human interfaceimprovements that are mentioned in the industrial applications chapter are

as beneficial in professional applications.

VOIP is coming more important application because many buildings use

only VOIP for phone calls. Therefore it is a benefit to company costs if

smart phones can use VOIP infrastructure when it’s available.

Most professional applications, especially email, require fluent

synchronization with PC or databases. Optimum situation would be that the

user would always have the latest version of application documents in both



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smart phone and PC without any specific actions (although of course there

are people who would like to keep the synchronization in manual so such

option should be left possible). This requires fast wireless data transfer

(WUSB, UWB-Bluetooth?) between smart phone and PC to be convenient

but as concept this is already implemented with Bluetooth connection insome synchronization software for calendar data. Email has been years in

use in smartphones (Nokia Communicator, RIM BlackBerry). Push

technologies are currently becoming common with email but a possibility is

to use push technology with other applications too to keep documents

synchronized.

2.1.3 Entertainment and home applications

The entertainment and home applications are the main reason for a

consumer to buy a smart phone or feature phone. These include applications

like

• Music

• Video and movies

• TV

• Smart remote controllers

• Gaming

• Internet browsing

• VOIP

• Chatting

• Electronic payment

Currently music phones, including music specialized smart phones, are thehot topic in mobile phone entertainment. All manufacturers have special

models for music interested consumer. Downloading music over network needs more complex applications than the music listening itself. Besides the

technically required software the digital rights management needs extra

software applications. To be competitive with specialized music players the

music phones need to have at least as good interface, as much storage and as

good commercial services for downloading as the leading personal music

player (currently Apple iPod product family with iTunes service). The

advantage of phones is obviously cellular connection so computer is not

necessarily needed to access music downloading services. Smart phones

advantage is the player software and other services can be added later up to

user needs while new services and other software installing is not usually

possible with feature phones or specialized music player devices (Java programs and firmware updates are exceptions).



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Video downloading services are becoming similar services as music

downloading. Technically video and TV viewing requires same kind of

computation to unpack the program to be watched. But the difference is that

video content is downloaded to smart phones internal data storage or

memory card or streamed in to the particular phone from IP-network usingexisting data transfer capabilities while the TV broadcasting receiving needs

special receivers. Another difference is the reception cost. In case of

downloading, the user has to pay for communication, while in case of

receiving TV broadcasts directly the communication itself does not cost

anything for the user. Some of the used standards for mobile video

broadcasting are DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting – Handheld), ISDB-T

(Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting for Terrestrial television broadcasting) and DMB (Digital Media Broadcasting).

One home application for smart phones could be to use them as smart

remote controls. There has been some attempts to use PDA’s as such but sofar those have been only minimal successful. Now UPnP™ (Universal Plugand Play) standard is coming to some smart phones and that allows

controlling compatible servers on PCs and compatible home electronics. So

if smart phone storage cannot carry all music, videos etc. it can carry at least

a list or database of them like m3u-playlists. These applications are

implementable with software and do not require any new hardware to smart

phones.

Entertainment in form of gaming has been a big part of the mobile phone

usage for years. Smart phones allow installing games that fully uses the full

capacity, especially computationally, of the device. Also the bigger displaysof smart phones (e.g. PDA-based may have VGA resolution) are an

advantage when compared to current kind of feature phones. Therefore

smart phones are the choice for game interested people or on the other hand

special gaming phones are a subset of smart phones. The computational

advantages, especially in graphics, will provide more PC/game console typeof experience in future smart phones. The different genres of games requires

very different capabilities of the gaming device so it is not sure that the most popular games at PCs and consoles are most suitable for smart phone

gaming. So there might be new opportunities to invent new types of gamesthat take advantage on mobility and communication capabilities and other

features of the smart phones.

Internet browsing is possible with current smart phones. But also this

application is limited by the size of the display because many websites are

designed for PC-browsing and needs even XGA displays for convenient use.

The VGA displays of some PDA-type smart phones and Nokia

Communicator 640x200 pixel display have shown that usually internet

content is usable with display that is wide enough. There are services

targeted for PDA users that try to solve the display size problems by

changing the content on-fly, but they have not been very successful.

Browsing needs also extra plug-ins like Java and Flash to be fluent in most

of the popular web-pages besides the browsers http-capabilities. This setsrequirements for smart phone software for good usability.



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Internet speech (VOIP) and text messaging applications (chatting) are

obvious usage for smart phone. The challenges for these applications are

mostly on the service provider side.

Many entertainment applications would benefit of the synchronization with

PC or other entertainment devices. For example to keep music collection

synchronized with home hi-fi/home theater -systems media player or having

the same saved game data if a game that works both on PC/gaming console

and smart phone is developed. To allow this it is important to have

compatibility with home electronics for most of smart phone multimedia

contents.

Electronic payment has been a dream application for banks at least from the

1980’s. Mobile phones have been presented as suitable device to enable

electric payment but it has not been taken in use except some special cases

like parking and vending machines. Maybe because of too manyorganisations want their share of the profits (banks, cellular operators, state)

but also because the SIM-card has not been considered enough secure user identification method when bigger sums of money are transferred in

payment. As an example of more developed user identification camera can be used as additional method with PIN-codes and passwords. Other

examples of proposals for identification are fingerprint scanning and voice

recognition.

2.2 Interface level based classification

Another way to classify smart phone applications is to divide them by theinterfacing level. The application-platform interface depends on the services

the application is using and on the performance requirements of application.

The used level has controversial effects to the efficiency and need of

different formatted applications to different smart phones. As a general rule,

the hardware usage is more efficient giving more computation power or

smaller energy consumption with same computation needs when application

uses hardware more directly. On the other hand, every smart phone model

needs its own version of the application if the communication to hardware is

direct.

2.2.1 Web-browser

Web-based applications uses browser to communicate with application. In

principle, it should not matter if the user uses computer or smart phone. The

user interface in smart phone and the capabilities of browsers limits the user

friendliness, possibilities and the performance of this approach. This is a

challenge to web designers as well as smart phone browser designers.

2.2.2 Java

There are large number Java applications that are targeted to smart phones

and feature phones. These applications usually have better user interfacethan the browser based applications because of Java does not have as much

restrictions as http and other web protocols have. However, the performance



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depends on performance of Java virtual machine, which may be a severe

restriction in case of applications that need a lot of computation power.

2.2.3 User Interface specific services

User interface based applications use the services that the system gives. This

is an important group of applications because of the success of such UIs like

S60 by Nokia and UIQ by Sony-Ericsson. The companies behind each UI

provide tools to make programs for building applications that are

compatible to the particular UI.

2.2.4 Operating System

The operating system based applications use can use all the OS services

directly. This means that they can benefit form all performance gains

provided by OS assuming that are coded successfully. In principle these

applications are portable from one phone to the another assuming that the

OS is the same, but the UI specific coding needs to be done for each

different UI separately.

2.2.5 Application Processing Engine

In case the full capacity of platform hardware is needed, then there may be a

need to bypass the OS services and to replace them with more optimised

services. In that case the interface between application and platform is on

application processing engine.

The benefit of this approach is the most optimal performance. Applicationdeveloper can exploit all the processing capacity, all the interconnectcapacity and all the memory capacity. It is also possible to make application

processing more deterministic and energy efficient.

The drawbacks are severe. The application is not portable. Every new

platform requires very expensive analysis and rework. Even the first version

of application is very difficult to develop, because thorough understanding

of the underlying architecture is needed. Secondly, the deterministic

execution may interfere with other activities that the device should be doing.

This may result to unexpected and unwanted behaviour of the phone.

The application processing interface should be used with care. In case of

platform service development it is a must, but otherwise it should avoided as

long as possible.

2.2.6 Modem/Interfaces

All of those classes mentioned in this chapter 2.2 can use modem and other

interfaces from smart phone to the outside world. But the baseband

operations are kept in own layer and applications do not have opportunity to

control them. The reasons for this are reliability and that the publicauthorities’ approvement generally restricts the possibilities of control of theradio parts in other ways that are specified. But some higher level protocols



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can be implemented also in applications, especially in non-cellular modems

to improve QoS etc.

2.2.7 Extended applications

This category is slightly different from the previous ones, because it does

directly follow the application-platform model. Extended application is an

application that needs additional hardware before it can be used. Typical

examples are navigation when using external GPS receiver and music

listening with external BT headphones. This category is very potential,

because new radio interfaces e.g. BT2 and ZigBee, can be easily used for

extending the capabilities of smart phones. Currently, the extensions have

been for user interfaces e.g. headsets, keyboards, mouse or interfaces to

other services, e.g. GPS, but nothing prevents using them for more powerful

processing or larger storages or some other dedicated functionality that

enable truly different applications.

2.3 Application development scenarios

The unreachable goal for the smart phone application interface is that every

existing application (except harmful ones like viruses etc.) could be used.

The practical goal should be that the application interface would be stable

and predictable so the applications could be developed and maintained

easily.

Smart phones success is dependent on the desirability and usability of the

available applications. The small size of the smart phones is attraction for users but also one major challenge in usability. Therefore the smart phonesare differentiated to application specific models while keeping flexibility.

The form and user interface, including both physical and software interface,are optimized to the selected purpose. In addition, the quality of the

platform services and features are emphasized to the chosen application.

This all provides convenience of usage to the smart phone target group.

An example of this differentiation development is the development of music

phones, see Figure 2-1. This development started before smart phones as

separate flash memory based players but when smart phones developed so

that the computing capabilities were enough for decoding mp3-compressedmusic it was obvious that the music playback would be included into smart

phones. Besides the stored music playback capability most music phones

include FM-radio receiver. Radio broadcasts are also listened as podcasts

i.e. radio programs are provided as compressed files (aac, mp3) for

downloading as music files can be downloaded. Technologies like flash

memory and small size hard disks have enabled to store enough music in

phone size devices. Now the development is going towards total control of person’s music listening interest. This seems to be done using UPnP type of

controlling protocol and music downloading services, podcasts andenhanced FM radio (e.g. Visual Radio by Nokia). Of course music

capabilities are expanded to video viewing like Apple® has expanded their iPod to Video-iPod. This development needs continuously more computing



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capacity which first is received by video accelerator blocks (which are

different to 3D graphics accelerators).

This kind of interaction with technology development within different

technologies like flash memory and cellular data speeds are turned into

smart phone applications. Development of an application has mostly gone

so that the feasibility of an application is first proved in special devices. The

additional value of integrating an application to smart phones is that people

like to carry as few devices as possible and that the modem capability of

smart phones usually provides new value when combined with the

application, like in this music phone example.

Figure 2-1. Music phone roadmap

For many applications there must be existing software or other connections

to other devices, usually PC. For example camera phones have had an

advantage as in PCs there are already photo viewing, editing and printing

services so the main thing for camera phone provider has been to enable

easy transfer of the pictures from the camera phone to the PC. Many

applications do not have this kind of ready base for the use so PC software

etc. might be needed to be provided with the smart phone.

Industrial and professional applications require similar enhancements

towards ergonomics in display and input device besides enhanced network capacity and security. Differentiation there is likely to base on environment

durability (e.g. resistance to water, dust and shock), location and sensor,measurement and data logging capabilities that some industrial applications

will require. The smart phone that is used by service personnel in industrialenvironment for reading documents needs more durable packaging than for

example a smart phone that is used by business people in office or other “clean” environments. Location/positioning is estimated to be a requirement

in many industrial applications. Satellite based systems (GPS, Galileo) work

only outside. Factory and other indoor environments require other kind of

location techniques. Some candidates for indoor positioning are WLAN

based approaches and UWB impulse based positioning. A roadmap for industrial use smart phones is shown in Figure 2-2. Nokia Communicator

has been office oriented smartphone from the 1990’s but it is not shown in



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the roadmap in Figure 2-3. The difference between not yet existing

(although Nokia E70 is close) first generation office phones and 1990’s

Nokia Communicator is especially on the data transfer speed.

Figure 2-2. Industrial smart phone roadmap.

Figure 2-3. Office smart phone roadmap.

The entertainment applications, like camera, music, gaming and internet

browsing, have each special requirements for user interfaces, which features

must emphasized and design including materials. All these can include same

smart phone platform that keeps the development and manufacturing costsfeasible. TV viewing is on special case of entertaining applications because

the data speed of broadcasted material and possible long time for operation.

Therefore it is expected that TV-decoders are implemented as special

acceleration blocks also in the future. The roadmap of TV-smart phones is

shown in Figure 2-4. Camera smart phones will like follow the development

in digital pocket cameras. The camera smart phone roadmap is shown in

Figure 2-5.



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Figure 2-4. TV –smart phone roadmap.

Figure 2-5. Camera smart phone roadmap.

The most advanced applications of any kind will use all the available

computation and data transfer capacity. Therefore the applications are

limited by the smart phone performance witch roadmap is described in

chapter 3. The computation capacity is challenging to increase more than

the silicon technology development allows because of the limitations in

power consumption. The data transfer capacity challenge can be partially

solved when WLAN networks are used but if they are not available then

cellular networks may reduce usability seriously depending of the uselocation because faster networks than GPRS (<100 kbps) are taken into use

slowly in sparsely populated areas.



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3 Smart Phone Technology Forecast

3.1 Current status

The current smart phones are already extremely versatile devices. Alreadythe cellular functionality includes GSM (2G) and UMTS (3G) speech and

GPRS (2G), EDGE (2.5G) and 3G data operating modes. Practically all

smart phones have also bluetooth radio link for near area wireless

communications and USB wired connection to computers. Almost all smart phones have build-in cameras which generate large amount of data to be

processed and stored. Besides of the networks and camera the data is read

from and written to local memory or a memory card attached to the smart

phone. So smart phones must be capable to use large number of connections

and dataflow and this must be done in some extend simultaneously. It isobvious that GPRS and 3G data transfers do not occur at the same time but

bluetooth and cellular speech are required to function at the same time.

Many smart phone models have some more features besides the mentioned

above which differentiate the model to specific target customer group.Additional connection possibilities like WiFi and infrared are expanding the

radio requirements. Some models have large displays which require higher video data traffic to displays. These kinds of features are going to be

common or even a requirement in smart phones in the future.

3.2 Radio modem trends

All radio links tend to become faster generation by generation. The speed isachieved mostly by more sophisticated algorithms which require more

computations, even per send data bit. One future trend is multiple input,

multiple output (MIMO) technologies that use several antennas. The

multiple antennas provide possibility to space-time coding witch gives more

reliable and faster data transmission. It is physically challenging to fit more

than two antennas to device that is size of smart phone unless the used radio

frequency is raised several orders. Radio modems have been mostly limited

with bandwidth but ultra wide band (UWB) has a different approach. As the

name implies it uses very large bandwidth, more than 500 MHz, but the

allowed power is limited so it can provide very fast data speed but only for

few meters distance or very low power consumption in tens of meters with

lower data rates. Pulse-type UWB radios gives also possibility to ranging.

The data speeds of different networks non-cellular and cellular are shown in

Figure 3-1 at logarithmic scale. Figure 3-2 [5] reveals the projections for

bitrate evolution of some broadband and cellular standards.



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Data Speeds of Networks

1

10

100

1000

10000

100000

1000000

N F C Z i g B e e

B l u e t o o t h 1. 1

B l u e t o o t h 2. 0 I r D

A

8 0 2. 1 1 b

8 0 2. 1 1 a

8 0 2. 1 1 g

8 0 2. 1 1 n W U

S B W i B r o W i M A

X G P

R S E D G E U M

T S

H S D P

A ( C u r r. )

H S D P

A ( M a x ) 3. 9 G 4 G

D a t a S p e e d [ k b i t s / s ]

Figure 3-1. Data speeds of networks.

2005 2006 2007 2008

802.16-e(WiMAX

nomadic/Mob)

WLAN

802.20(Standardisation

phase)

802.16-2004(WiMAX fixed)

EDGE

CDMA2000

WCDMA

2009 2010

1 Mb/s

UL 100-200kB/sDL 200-300 kB/s

14 Mb/s

11…54 Mb/s

UL 384 kB/sDL 384 kB/s

1xEV-DODL 2.4 MB/sUL 153kB/s

1xEV-DODL 3.1 MB/sUL 1.8 MB/s

HSDPADL 3.6 MB/s

HS(D/U)PAUL 1…2 MB/sDL 14 MB/s

HSUPAUL 5 MB/s

DL 14 Mb/s

Cellular

access

Broadband

access

540 Mb/s

Figure 3-2. Projected bitrate evolution for uplink (UL) and downlink (DL)



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3.2.1 Cellular radios

Cellular radios are dependent of the regulations and agreements. The

cellular modem parts of the phones are getting more complex to have more

efficiency in radio frequency usage (bits/MHz) etc. Common,

programmable or reconfigurable, baseband hardware can be used in these

modems because of the number of concurrently used cellular radios is

limited. A special case of cellular radio usage is to switch seamless from

cellular radio to unlicensed radio. For example one possibility is to have

VOIP using both WLAN-type of radios and cellular radio even during one

call.

The digital baseband processing is likely to be separated from the user

application processing, because of for example safety/authority regulation

requirements. The data transfer is provided as service to applications with

possible quality of service (QoS) parameters. Currently first phones withHigh Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) with downlink speed of 3.6

Mbps are available but the max standardized data rate is 14 Mbits/s. Future3.9 generation devices should be capable to about 100 Mbps data rates.

3.2.2 Other radios

Bluetooth, WiFi, WiMAX, Wireless USB, ZigBee etc. are examples of

radios that use unlicensed frequency bands and that can be used without feesto operator. Bluetooth is geared towards voice and data application in 10 m

and 100 m ranges depending on class of the device. The peak data rate of

Bluetooth is 3 Mbps with the newest version 2.0 and with future UWBBluetooth 480 Mbps but only in few meters range. “Certified Wireless

USB” uses UWB technology and provides data speeds of 110 Mbps at 10 m

range and 480 Mbps at 2-3 m range. This is not yet commercial although are

promised during year 2006. ZigBee is low data speed (max 250 kbit/s)

standard which is targeted to low power and low cost applications. WiFi is

the most popular wireless local area network but has so far been in few

smartphones because too high power consumption. 802.11b (11 Mbps)

version has been available long time and 54 Mbps versions (802.11g and

802.11a in USA) have also been years at market. WiMAX is coming tocommercial use now and it is targeted to long distances (up to 50 km but

needs line of sight) and it offers data rates to 70 Mbps. Mobile WiMAX isnow in standardization.

The speed of these additional radios will grow, especially in very shortdistances where UWB is usable. The speeds of hundreds of megabits per

second will provide new type of applications but the speed it self setsrequirements in modem and data processing capabilities. Besides fast data

rates another advantage of UWB is the low power in transmitter RF but the

range will be short. If low data rates are accepted then UWB will be very

simple and low power consuming but there are yet not any standardised

applications for this.

For local area connections WLANs will evolve from current 802.11a/b/g to

n-version which is promised to provide transfer rates up to 600 Mbps.



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MIMO is the key technological advancement to achieve these kind of data

rates.

3.2.3 Modem

Traditionally modem baseband has been implemented as dedicated

hardware. When modem generation is matured then silicon technology has

been developed in stage that enables baseband computation with DSP

processor but when new generation is taken in use then the modem

baseband performance requirements has forced to change back to dedicated

hardware. New technologies have emerged that are claimed to be suitable

for low power/high performance designs like smart phone modems.

Embedded programmable logic in forms of FPGA (e.g.

http://www.m2000.fr/), configurable processors (e.g.

http://www.tensilica.com/) and re-configurable processors (e.g.

http://www.pactcorp.com/) provide programmability and high performance.If traditional dedicated hardware blocks or DSP processor approach does

not give enough performance and/or flexibility to latest generation devicesthen obvious approach is a mix of hardware blocks or DSP processor and

one or more of these new technologies. The downside of mixing differenttechnologies is that the use of several tools, coding languages etc. makes

implementation, programming and testing more difficult.

Many of the mentioned radio modems might be used simultaneously. For

example, WLAN to download video content from internet to phone, WUSB

to video to bigger display and Bluetooth to send sound to headphones.

Therefore it is difficult to use a single reconfigurable digital baseband(software defined radio, SDR) for all these radios. A possibility is that when

there will be large number of radios on one device then those modems that

are not used on same time or are just relatively simple could be done in SDR

approach and the most complex modems would have hardware or mixed

HW/SW implementation.

The use of programmable digital radio basebands requires a design

paradigm change with new tools and methodologies and therefore the

effects are challenging to predict. Another option is to implement all radiomodems separately as logic blocks and just turn of the operating voltage of

the unused parts but this is supposed to take more silicon area and does notallow modifying of the used algorithms as a reconfigurable or software

based implementation.

3.3 Computation trends

Smart phones are computationally quite limited devices because of power consumption and heat dissipation limitations. The heat limitations means

that even better batteries do not solve problems for computation capacity

shortage during requirement peaks like video coding etc. So the key is tohave both efficient algorithms and hardware. All algorithms are important in

http://www.m2000.fr/

http://www.tensilica.com/

http://www.pactcorp.com/

http://www.pactcorp.com/

http://www.tensilica.com/

http://www.m2000.fr/



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both application and modem to keep computational heat dissipation as low

as possible.

Network on Chip (NoC) is an emerging processor interconnect architecture

type. NoCs overcome some scalability problems of System on Chips (SoC)

by implementing a network of routers for inter-core communication.

Heterogenous SoCs require the whole interconnect to be driven each time an

inter-core action is made, which is not the case with NoCs. Simple routers

can be used to implement an interconnect network of a predictable nature

and a low power consumption. Figure 3-3 shows the general direction of

handheld device processor architecture evolution.

1995 2003

SRAM DSP

Logic

MPUSRAM

Non-SOC

2006 2010+

External memory

SOC (OMAP1)

DSPMPU

SRAM

Cache Cache+SRAM

Traffic controller

External memory

SOC (OMAP2)

DSPMPU

SRAM

Cache Ca ch e+

SRAM

Crossbar - Interconnect

IVA2 2D/3D

External memory

MPU DSP1

FPGA DSP2

SRAM

MPU

MPUMPU

NOC = switch

MMU

Figure 3-3. Evolution of handheld device processor architectures.

3.3.1 Application processors

Video encoding and decoding are one of the computationally most intensivetasks on an application processor. Table 3-1 gives an idea on how the

application complexity will evolve in the near future [6].

Table 3-1. Video standard complexity comparison.

Video

standard

operations per

pixel

processing

speed

MPEG-4 200-300 2-3 GOPS

H.264-AVC 600-900 6-10 GOPS

Future 2000-3000 20-30 GOPS

Current smart phones usually have a single core processor running at speeds

of 200 to 600 MHz as their applications processor, although some

exceptions exist. Computations in the future smart phones will likely bedivided to more than one unit. Most common solution is a RISC CPU with

DSP processor and other accelerators. Examples of this approach are TIs



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OMAP series where the number of accelerators has grown generation by

generation while the performance of CPU has also improved. The

accelerators in OMAP can handle 2D/3D graphics, video and audio, and

camera data processing. Also the ARM Cortex-A8 CPU of the upcoming

OMAP 3 is capable for superscalar operations. With the OMAP productfamily, this development has enabled leaving standard DSP unit out from

the application side when more specified accelerators do DSP related tasks

faster and/or more efficiently.

Another way to extend processing capabilities is to add the number of RISC

cores. NEC has a prototype of four ARM cores in symmetric

multiprocessing (SMP) connection. The multicore approach is currently a

hot topic in PC world when both AMD and Intel have multicore CPUs

available. Application transfer to multi-threaded environment has been slow

there, probably because of long single CPU tradition. Mobile phone

development is used to divide computation between different units (RISCand DSP) so smart phone developers might be more ready to developapplications to multicore environment than their PC software colleagues.

The single core Intel XScale processor has been very successful in theWindows PDA market. It will be interesting to see how this architecture will

compete against the multi core approaches in the future. One of the clear

benefits of single core architecture is the ease of compiler and application

development especially for the third party software partners, as their code

has to run on only one type of an instruction set.

Table 3-2 shows a list of application processing related SoCs used in high-end smart phones and PDAs.



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Table 3-2. Concurrent SoC application processors.

Application

processors

Main core Main

clock [MHz]

DSP extensions/cores

Accelerators

(details)

Process Ships

Single core

Intel Xscale

PXA27x PXA27x ~600

Wireless MMX

(ext. in PXA)

90-

130nm 2005

Intel "Monahan" “Monahan” ~1250 unknown unkn. >2006

Heterogenous

multicore

TI OMAP 1710 ARM926 ~220 TI C55x (core) 90nm 2005

TI OMAP 2420 ARM11 ~330

Altivec (ext. in

ARM11), TIC55x (core)

IVA (ARM7+multimedia accel.) 90nm 2005

TI OMAP 2430 ARM11 ~330Altivec (ext. inARM11)

IVA2 (MCU +accel.) 90nm 2005

TI OMAP 3430

ARM

Cortex-A8 ~550

NEON (ext. in

Cortex-A8)

IVA 2+ (TI C64+),

ISP (unknown) 65nm 2008?

Freescale

i.MX31 ARM11 ~550

MPEG4 (hw

accel.), IPU 90nm 2006

Homogenous

multicore

NEC ARM4 4x ARM11 ~400

Altivec ext. in

each ARM11core Unknown 130nm 2006

Appendix A also lists some DSP and GPP cores usable in a system chip.The benchmark information is from BDTi [7].

3.3.2 Baseband processors

Signal processing in the baseband region has a different nature compared tothe application region. To get some insight on the how the processing speed

requirements are evolving, see Table 3-3. The values in the table are for

solutions employing Turbo-decoding and they do not include chip level

decoding and symbol level combining that further increase the processing

needs. It is quite clear that baseband processing especially for turbo

decoding will be impossible to perform without dedicated hardware

accelerators [6].



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Table 3-3. Processing speed requirements in 3-3.9G systems.

Channel type Data rate Processing speed

Typical 3G 0.384 Mbps 1-2 GOPS

HSDPA 14.4 Mbps 35-40 GOPS

Future 3.9G OFDM 100 Mbps 210-290 GOPS

Smart phone baseband processors haven’t usually been integrated intoapplication processors, but this is likely to change in the near future. Texas

Instruments has integrated a baseband processor in their OMAPV2230 SoC.

The single chip consists of an OMAP2430 core for applications and a

ARM9+C55x combination for 3G baseband processing. Freescale has asimilar approach with their MXC300-30. A Starcore SC140 baseband DSP

is integrated on a i.MX31 applications processor to make a 3G enabled

platform.

3.3.3 Graphics and video decoding

Video games have need for hardware acceleration for graphics like we have

seen in PCs but also decoding of movies also require efficient acceleration

especially to save battery power. Scalable vector graphics are on way tosmart phones and that needs new kind of accelerators/graphics processors.

The video decoding accelerators are very different than 3D processors so

usually they are implemented in separate hardware block inside the

application SoC. In PC-gaming the graphics processor uses as much energythat the desktop type CPU uses. Therefore in smart phones it is important to

take care of the power consumption from defining the 3D APIs toimplementation of the graphics processor. Both gaming and video viewing

can take long continuous time which makes the power consumptionchallenge even more severe.

Modern application system-on-chips usually include some kind of agraphics processor. Some high performance solutions with external

multimedia processors have been on the market for some time. Notably the

Intel 2700G multimedia processor has been used in Dell Axim 50x and 51x

PDA devices. The usage of an external chip as an accelerator processor is

not a very novel idea in the era of SoCs and NoCs.

3.3.4 Memory

The main memory of smartphones is not integrated on SOCs as the silicon

area needed is unfeasibly large. Only the cache and other close-to-core

coupled fast memories are on the SOC chips. The amount of memory insmartphones in 2005 was in the range of 30 (Nokia N70) to 64 megabytes

(QTEK9000). Mobile DDR is starting to replace mobile SDR and SRAM as



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handset memories. Figure 3-4 shows the projected evolution of mobile

memory capacities and bandwidths in mobile handsets along with other

technologies. It is estimated that in 2007 a mobile handset mobile handset

will have an average of 100 megabytes of memory – and this figure is likely

higher for high end smart phones.

2004 2007

SRAM8 MB average68 MB max

100 MB/s

90 MB NOR

1.6 MB/s

1.3 Mpixels

CIF

Mobile DDR100 MB average

384 MB max

800 MB/s

225 MB NAND

7.2 MB/s

6 Mpixels

VGAVideo capture

Image capture

Flash program BW

Flash density

RAM BW

RAM density

2010

Mobile DDR2230 MB average

880 MB max

1500 MB/s

440 MB NAND

14 MB/s

12 Mpixels and/or low light features

HDTV

Note: 2004 and 2007 figures are from Samsung

2010 figures derived from 2007 figures with ITRS 2005 information

Figure 3-4. Handset memory feature evolution between 2004 and 2007.

3.4 Platform service trends

The evolution and new applications will come from different directions: PC

applications are fitted for smart phones, separate gadgets are integrated tosmart phone (camera, music player) and mobility (GPS, ubiquitous

applications). In principle, everything that can be used with or connected to

a laptop should be implemented into smart phones. And of course someonemay invent something totally new...

Generally the number of interfaces and the data speeds in the interfaces will

grow as well as the processing/computation requirements while the size and

weight of the smart phones should be highest at the current level.

Besides of these functional applications people have needs for security and

privacy. Smart phones have large number of personal data and economic

miss-usage possibilities which may fear smart phone owners. The firewall

and anti-virus programs may become a necessity. The different

identification methods are developed also, like face detection which uses thecamera that is already in the device (demonstrated by Panasonic at 3GSM



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2006) or something like fingerprint detection which needs a specific sensor

for that purpose.

Content owners are requiring complete and mandatory digital rights

management (DRM) system which will prevent use of content to other

purposes that the content owner/provider has thought. This is a feature that

many users fear so smart phones should make DRM as convenient as

possible. Probably this requires some DRM features also from the platforms

hardware.

3.4.1 Displays

The displays will grow as size and as the number of pixels. The quality

requirements rise when people watches pictures and video from smart phone

screens. The videos and video games require fast response time from the

display and cause a lot of data traffic to display and this data rate rises as the

number of pixels rises. The variation in smart phone display resolution has

been small mostly because of operating system limitations. Now this limit is

demising and a variety of different display sizes and formats are coming tonew smart phone models. Currently mostly used resolution is QVGA

(320x240). The display is selected according to the most importantapplications of specific model. TV and Video watching requires display that

is wider than high, at least 4:3 unless 16:9 is used. Wide displays are usefulalso in internet browsing and gaming. PDAs have usually had 90 degrees

turned display i.e. 3:4 and about this ratio have traditionally been in use on

mobile phones. This higher than wide display is suitable on many PDA-

types of applications and fits well on physical format of mobile phones. Anoption that has so far implemented in few applications is to use display in

different watching directions e.g. turn the device 90 degrees to watch video

from a display that is normally used in 3:4 mode.

Anyway the feasible size of smart phones limits the size of the display

unless foldable or projection displays are taken in use. Currently foldable

displays exist in separate display products but they are slow and still take

considerable volume when folded in. Currently we don’t have exact

predictions how foldable displays will evolve and when they could beusable in smart phones. Projector techniques might be one possible way to

have bigger display from smart phones. Currently smallest 800x600 pixel projectors are size of 127.2 x 94.5 x 76.8mm i.e. almost one litre volume

without battery and weights 660g (Samsung P300). It uses led-lamps thathave much lower power requirements than traditional projector lamps so

battery operation is possible. If this development ever leads to a projector

that could be embedded to smart phone is difficult to predict. Second light

source for projecting display is laser witch can be considered more

promising by the latest prototypes. Smallest prototype that we found (by

Light Blue Optics Limited) has about 62 cc volume and uses averagely 350

mW to display monochrome image in sizes less than 15 inch.

Another way for better and especially bigger displays is the use of externaldisplays. The external displays can be personal (“video eye-wear”) or TV-

set/video projector type. The connection to these can be wired but wireless



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connection would be preferred. As discussed, the data rate for video is high

or very high depending on the image size and frame rate.

The data rates for QVGA, VGA and two forms of wide-VGA (15:9 & 16:9)

are shown in Figure 3-5. Currently most advanced smart phone displays use

18 bits color space and PCs use 32 bits while 24 bits was the previous step

in PC world. If data is sent to external display then lower bitrates can be

used because the external display have logic that converts data to RGB-

values, see numbers for camera data speeds in Table 3-5.

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36

Bits/Pixel

M b i t s / s

QVGA

VGA

WVGA(15:9)

WVGA(16:9)

Figure 3-5. The required data speeds for different smart phone display sizes and color

resolutions.

3.4.2 Cameras

The cameras are standard equipment in feature phones and smart phones

already today. The numbers of pixels in camera cells are continuously rising

and it is expected that this rise will continue, possibly settling when 10

megapixel limit is reached because of the physical limitations with optics performance. The number of pixels is directly related to data traffic from

camera to storage like memory cards and also required processing power to

compress, noise reduction, image stabilizing and other picture processing

algorithms. The processing power and data transfer and storing speedsduring picture taking will be important because people like to be able to take

fast series of pictures (usually referred as sport-mode). The large picturefiles are usually transferred from phone to PC, printer or external display

which requires more data traffic in that phase than smaller size pictures.

The zoom and focus functions are producing mainly mechanical challenges

and at least the camera factories have created auto-focus algorithms fromthe 1980’s. Therefore it is not going to be a special challenge for digital

logic to adapt to zoom and auto-focus requirements.



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Video recording is used with smart phones along the still pictures. The

number of pixels is lower in video mode than in still picture mode but the

frame rate in video mode is preferably 25 or more pictures per second which

will produce extremely large amount of data to be processed and stored.

These pictures and videos are wanted to be seen from larger displays than

today. This issue was discussed above. Smart phones display is usually used

as viewfinder in camera use. To perform well in viewfinder use the delay

from camera to display should be only some tenth of second and the display

should be sharp to check focusing and bright to be able to be seen in

daylight.

Both video and still pictures have similar but large encoding and decoding

processing requirements that these must be taken care by using some kind of

hardware acceleration. Many people thought still pictures like photographs

and small devices like smart phones have difficulties to fit good optics in product but video is used to be seen with lower quality and smart phones

have less size based limitations on video recording.

3.4.3 Sound

The sound processing requirements are evolving with the available contents.When content is music the required processing is limited (at level of mp3

decoding + equalizing etc.) but if movies will become a use for smart phones then also sound processing should follow movie standards like

Dolby Digital and DTS and additionally have some processing for

formatting sound more attractive for headphones, for example like DolbyHeadphones processing which makes 5.1 sound usable with headphones.

This processed sound should be transferred to headphones wirelessly. This

complex sound processing uses considerable amount of computing capacity.

3.4.4 Storage

Currently smart phones have memory card slots for expanding data and

application storage. The latest mobile phone memory cards have maximum

size of two gigabytes. Some new phones (e.g. Samsung SGH-i300, Nokia

N91) have hard disks embedded. Currently hard disks are at size of few

gigabytes but already later this year nearly 10 gigabytes e.g. Samsung SGH-i310 will have 8 GB hard disk. One possibility is also bigger external hard

disks with radio link. With Bluetooth link the speed would be enough for music and low quality video but as soon the faster connections like 802.11g

WLAN or wireless USB are added to products the bottleneck is in other parts of the smart phone based system.

3.4.5 Physical user interfaces

The small size of smart phones is and will be the most challenging issue in

smart phone user interface development. It is just impossible to implementergonomic keyboard to that small device. Besides typing aids like T9

predicting writing and QWERTY-keyboards, other means of human input

are developed. Voice recognition is already in use, even without teaching personal voice profiles, but only for simple tasks. Hand writing recognition



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is another input technology that has been developed years for PCs and

PDAs but that has not been widely used in smartphones. Other at least

demonstrated ways for user input are gestures and moving/turning the

device which are detected with acceleration sensors.

Communication with the environment is not actually user interface but can

help on controlling the smart phone. For example, RF-tags can replace

difficult input and selection by doing those automatically when an RF-tag is

read. This has obvious applications in ticket and other kind of service

ordering and paying.

A different approach could be to predict what the user will do based on

previous behaviour of the user. This approach has been used years by TiVo

TV-recording system that records TV-programs that might interest the user

without manually selecting them. Amazon.com also has a technique that

after few selections by the user can propose books and other items that theuser might be interested of. This approach needs classification databases and

good algorithms to work.

3.5 Operating system trends

Currently the situation of operating systems on smart phones can be seen as

Symbian vs. others when the number of sold smart phones is studied.

Symbian has approached the smart phone from traditional phone perspective

is mostly used by Nokia, Ericsson and other “old” mobile phonemanufactures. Windows Mobile and PalmOS have come to smart phone

market from PDA world and have been used by HP, Fujitsu-Siemens, Treoand other companies that have their backgrounds in PDA business. Linux

does not have a clear approach because the user interfaces of different Linux

phones vary significantly, but there are products from Motorola, Panasonic

and NEC, for example. Most likely development on operating systems is

that they will be more like each others but some differentiation by smart

phones target groups will be needed. One example is the Nokia E61 witch

looks a lot like PDA-phone but has Symbian OS. This is an example of the

flexibility that the new versions of operating systems provide.

3.5.1 Symbian

Symbian OS is currently the basis of three major open smartphone user

interface platforms – UIQ from Sony Ericsson and Series 60 and 80 both

from Nokia. Symbian OS is also used in closed platforms such as Japanese

FOMA phones from NTT DoCoMo. Originating from EPOC, Symbian is

basically a set of C++ libraries aiming to optimize memory usage and

maximize battery life and modularity.

Currently version 9.1 of Symbian OS has been released in real products and Nokia’s N91 is the first phone implementing the system. The 9-series

Symbian is used with the Series 60 3rd

edition user interface by Nokia. Sony

Ericsson is bringing their Symbian 9-series based phones with UIQ3 user interface.



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The main difference with the 9.1 version compared to the previous 8.1 is the

Symbian Signed –program. Any program on the new OS using for example

networking features must be digitally signed in order to work. The rationale

is that the company Symbian is able to gather certificate fees and on the

other hand improve the security of the programs. Old Symbian 8.1 programswill not work on the 3rd edition version due to the digital signing process,

which poses serious problems for some vendors (such as Ouman in the

Rooster scope). The Symbian 3rd edition EKA2 kernel will support ARMv5

architectures such as ARM10 and XScale.

3.5.2 Linux

Linux is widely used in embedded systems and is also emerging as a strong

competitor in the smartphone sector. Although Linux is an open source

operating system, it comes appears in different flavours for the customer.

Smartphone manufacturers take vastly different approaches with Linux.Open source Linux development can be categorized for example with the

type of the distribution used by device manufacturer. On the other hand, thenature of the application development environment is also a differentiating

factor. This can be seen in Table 3-4. Sandbox development means thatdevelopers can create applications only in a restricted non-native

environment, such as Java.

Table 3-4. Categorizing different Linux approaches for smart phones.

Open (native) development

Commercial Linux

distros, such as

MontaVista or Trolltech.

Native development,

system hackable.

Open source

community Linux.

Native development,

system hackable.

Closed (sandbox) development

Commercial Linux

distros + proprietary

layer(s).

Sandbox development,

system not hackable.

Open source

community Linux.+

propieraty layer(s).

Sandbox development,

system not hackable.

Commercial Linux

distributions used.

Open source used.

Nokia doesn’t currently make a phone with Linux, but instead has the 770

internet table available. The 770 fits the “open development – open source”

category of the previous table. The company also supplies the Maemo

application development platform for 770, which allows developers to port,

write, debug and test 770 specific software on a Linux PC. Maemo will also

be the platform for the upcoming Nokia Linux products. The upcoming

Maemo 2.0 will add features such as VoIP, but due to a new application packaging system, etc. it makes version 1.1 applications incompatible.

Unlike the Symbian S60 3rd edition compatibility issues, this is really not a



RESEARCH REPORT

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problem at the moment since the internet tablet is mainly used and

developed by Linux enthusiasts.

Motorola is an interesting case since it has several Linux-based phones on

the market, but is not keen in giving third-party developers direct access to

application development. However as the GNU Public License of the

original Linux kernel obligates, the source codes for the phones are supplied

by the company. Motorola uses Trolltech’s Qtopia and Qt/Embedded

graphical user interface design tools to build user space applications, but

these applications are on top of a proprietary service layer called EZX. Thus

its Linux phones matched the “closed development – commercial Linux

distros” category. The usage of this layer effectively makes native third

party software development on the phones impossible. This has prompted

critics to claim that Motorola is using Linux to escape paying license fees of

other operating systems.

3.5.3 PalmSource Access Linux Platform (ALP)

Palm OS was originally launched for the first generation Pilot PDA devicefrom US Robotics in 1996. Over the years, over 20 000 third party

applications have been produced for the operating system and Palm OS hasalso found its way into smartphones named Palm Treo. Although not a

major contender in the phone business, PalmSource (developer of the PalmOS) is currently making an interesting step towards a Linux based operating

system. In fact the latest Palm OS 6.0 is being cancelled in favour of the

Access Linux Platform (ALP). It is a mobile software platform, which

provides a large number of programming options for developers. The four types of software that can be run on it are:

• MAX Applications (the native ALP interface)

• Palm OS Emulation layer (the native Palm OS 5.0 applications)

• GTK+ (native Linux like environment)

• J2ME (Java Virtual Machine)

ALP is currently in prototype phase, an SDK should be available for licensees in the end of 2006 and products with ALP are predicted to go on

sale in 2007. The ALP stack is a very promising, yet complicated approachin integrating different application development method on a single device.

The quality of the implementation will be the deciding factor in whether thesystem will penetrate the market. The stack diagram can be seen in Figure

3-6 [8].



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Figure 3-6-1. Access Linux Platform stack.

3.5.4 SavaJe Platform

Differing remarkably from the ALP approach, the SavaJe uses a native Java

stack without a generic Java Virtual Machnie (JVM). The idea behind thisapproach is the great number of Java applications and the need for a lighter

stack which can be seen in Figure 3-7 [9].

Figure 3-7. SavaJe application platform.

One mobile phone has been released featuring this platform – the Jasper S20from GSPDA Group Sense Limited PDA (GSPDA). The platform features

support for the Jazelle Java acceleration of the ARM926EJ-S core of the



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OMAP730 processor. This supported feature is actually quite rare and is

made possible by the highly OS kernel layer above the CPU. Some of the

most critical functions of the stack are coded in C/C++ for better

performance.

3.5.5 Windows Mobile

Microsoft has been developing their embedded version of the Windows

operation system since mid-nineties. Currently the core OS is in its fifth

generation and is named CE 5.0 (Macallan). Microsoft makes specialized

operating systems based on this core for automotive, smartphone and

handheld-PC applications. The latest smartphone operating system is the

Windows Mobile 5.0 and it was launched in the October of 2005. Several

PDA and smartphone manufacturers such as Dell, HP and HTC use this

operating system in their products. Actually, even Palm has made one Treo

smartphone that runs Windows Mobile.

The main features of the newest version are:

• .NET Compact Framework 1.0

• Office Mobile

• Windows Media Player 10 Mobile

• GPS management interface

• Microsoft Exchange Server push functionality (for push email)

3.6 Application service trends

Application services are constantly updated in the world of smartphones.

This poses a challenge for hardware and software vendors as new featuresare added to the services on a fast pace.

3.6.1 Macromedia Shockwave

Macromedia shockwave is one of the most popular browser extensions. It is

designed for making various kinds of movies and online animations, but it is

being used for game development also. It should not be confused with

Macromedia Flash. Shockwave pages can also be used as web applications

beyond the capabilities of normal HTML browser pages. The problem with

the player is, that only a few smart phones currently support it.



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3.6.2 Macromedia Flash

Macromedia Flash is a small animation player, and its size gives it a wider

distribution compared to Shockwave. It is a basic animation player mainly

to enhance the appearance of web pages beyond basic HTML. Flash has a

very fast start-up time and is quite light, so a Flash player can be

downloaded onto most smartphones.

3.6.3 Java

Sun Java is a very popular language for making platform independent

software. Platform independence is gained by compiling a Java language

program first into intermediate byte-code. Each platform has a specific Java

Virtual Machine (JVM), which compiles the byte-code into native platform

code during run-time. Java can be used on client or servers sides and the

desktop. The mobile version of the Java development kit is called Java 2

Platform, Micro Edition (J2ME)

3.6.4 .NET framework

The .NET framework from Microsoft is a platform independent competitor

to Java in many ways. NET framework programs have a small performance

penalty compared to native code, but Microsoft advertises that programmingfor .NET will be much faster than developing native applications. Along

with Windows, .NET programs can be run on Linux, Mac OS and NetBSDoperating systems, just as Java applications can. The current Windows

Mobile 5.0 operating system already has .NET Compact Framework 1.0integrated and the version 2.0 is available for download.

3.6.5 AJAX

Asynchronous Javascript and XML (AJAX) is a new web development

technology for creating interactive web applications. Its intent is to make

interactive web pages appear faster by exchanging only the necessary data

between the client and the server, rather than reloading a complete web

page. It uses a combination of XHTML and CSS for styling information,

Javascript or Jscript to dynamically interact with the information presented.

AJAX is not a technology itself, the term refers to a group of technologies.

3.7 Technology and service development scenarios

The application processing platform development in possible time to market

requires use of very large blocks in implementation. When processing units

are reused it induces use of parallel processing units. That requires new way

of coding the applications. This is currently happening in PC world so

experiences there are in use when the smart phone parallel processing is

taken in use (ITRS 2005 [10] suggest year 2009).

Together the digital baseband and application processing requires doubling

of the computation capacity every year while keeping the dynamic part of



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the power consumption constant according to ITRS 2005 edition. The static

power consumption will rise so the added heat must be dissipated more

efficient way by using heat spreading techniques such as heat pipes.

Although these challenges in digital hardware development are significant

even more challenges will be in software development. The software coding

easiness is one of the key issues when the digital computation platform is

developed.

The platform services are the enablers when application differentiated smart

phones are developed. The emphasized feature required by chosen main

application is selected for high quality. Other features of the smartphones

are selected as standard level so that any feature does no appear lower

quality than in the competitors’ smart phones. Example of this is the current

situation in smart phone camera. While standard camera is fixed focus two

megapixels camera the models that emphasize photography have nowautofocus (Nokia N90, Sony Ericsson K750i) and already published new

models have optical zoom, three or more megapixels camera sensor andhigh power flash (Nokia N93, Samsung V770). The smart phone users still

want the flexibility so any major possibilities of the smart phone usagecannot be left out, those users who can do without flexibility will by a

feature phone.

The development of the platform services is challenging to estimate because

as well as technological limitations there are physical limitations and

limitations to usability by other parts of the smart phone. It clear the

technological development is changing the basic display resolution toQVGA (240x320) but the moment of change seems to be more dependent of

the capability of processing platform and operating systems than the

advancement in display technologies. The display of Nokia 770 Internet

Tablet has 800x480 pixels resolution and diagonal size of 10.4 cm. This size

is near the limit that can be put into smart phone because display cannot be

physically much bigger and more dense pixels does not give any advantages

(at least in common applications).

Camera sensors development can bee seen from the compact digitalcameras. Since slow start of the compact digital camera market the number

of megapixels has grown steadily to current situation when all better modelshave eight megapixels. This is despite the opinions of camera magazines

that the optics has been the limiting factor for the picture quality after four or five megapixel models. This kind of rise of resolution is expected for the

smart phone cameras also because it is cheaper to raise the number of pixels

than to build better quality optics. But as mentioned above, at least in smart

phones targeted for picture taking use the quality of the lens system is one

competing method. Video purposes require more from battery and data

storage than the still images but less resolution from the camera sensor.

Besides fewer pixels the video data have high requirements for data speedsfrom the camera sensor to the data compressor logic Table 3-5 and storage

size and write speed of compressed data. With H264 encoding the currentmobile content can have data speed of about 60 kbps but the HDTV

resolution needs as much as 8 Mbps (according to Apple). The limit of the



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resolution could be HDTV resolution (1920x1080) but this resolution is

available now only on high-end “prosumer” video cameras. Nokia N93 was

introduced in May 2006 and it is the first smart phone to have DVD

resolution (NTSC, 640x480) video recording quality. Usually users can

make DVDs with their PC’s but higher resolution formats are not yet clear even for movies and the consumer requirements seem to depend on this

issue. So we cannot estimate when higher resolution video could be adapted

to smart phones but DVD resolutions are to come within few years to all

smart phones.

Table 3-5. The data speeds of camera sensors with 4:2:0 YUV coding.

System Resolution Pixels

Framerate

[Hz] Quantization

bits/pixel with

4:2:0 coding

Uncompressed

Mbits/s

Uncompressed

Mbytes/s

QVGA 320*240 76800 30 8 12 27,648 3,456

VGA 480*640 307200 30 8 12 110,592 13,824

DVD(PAL) 576*720 414720 25 8 12 124,416 15,552

HDTV(720p) 720*1280 921600 60 8 12 663,552 82,944HDTV(film) 1920*1080 2073600 24 8 12 597,1968 74,6496

HDTV(1080i) 1920*1080 2073600 30 8 12 746,496 93,312

HDTV(1080p) 1920*1080 2073600 60 8 12 1492,992 186,624

The high fidelity sound features of smart phones are used for music

listening and sound of the videos and movies. The stereo sound is already

implemented but surround sound for videos and especially movies requires

special decoders (Dolby Digital, DTS) and headphone surround sound

coders. These become a requirement when other movie watching issues are

solved. Technically storage space and display size are the main technicalissues of movie viewing but probably the challenge is to get agreement with

rights owners so a system could be build where users can buy or rent amovie with affordable price to their smart phone. For this reason it is

impossible to foresee when the surround sound features are needed and if it

takes more than few years then the application processing performance

could be enough to implement these features with software without

hardware acceleration.

Data storage size is one of the key features in many smart phone

applications, like music listening, movie viewing and video recording that

were mentioned above. This can and must be approached from two

directions both having more memory capacity and having better efficiency

data compression. For the beginning of this decennium the capacity of flashdevices has raised faster than Moore’s law predicts but for next 10-15 years

the ITRS 2005 edition forecasts a bit slower development than Moore’s law

i.e. in next five years there would be raise of the flash density of average

26% per year. Expected development is shown in Figure 3-8 with feasiblesize of 1 GB for memory card and 64 MB for on device flash memory in

year 2005 as starting point. Development can be faster if those flash

technologies that store four bits per cell instead of current two bits are really

successful. Besides of flash memory technologies there are hard disks used

on few devices. The data density of hard disks has risen from 10 to 100

gigabits per square inch in latest five years and this development seems to

continue. N HDD smart phones have 3 or 4 gigabytes disks so in year 2011they would have 40 gigabyte hard disks.



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0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Year

M B y t e s

Memory Card

On device flash

Figure 3-8. The expected development for flash memory on memory cards and on deviceaccording to the ITRS 2005 edition.

.



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4 Conclusions

Smart phone technologies are in rapid progress and there is a strong

application push behind it. In this report we have covered the main

application requirement trends and scratched the surface of the basicroadmaps of smart phone related technologies. It is clear from all market

related information that smart phones will be the dominant phone category

in the next few years. The only competition comes from more closed feature

phones. In practise the actual phones may be very similar, and the only

distinction is their limitations with respect to new applications.

The greatest technological challenges will be related to user interfaces. The

shift from device-oriented to service-oriented world is already going-on.Another major trend is towards user friendliness. Smart phone is, by nature,

a generic mobile computer that can be used for variety of purposes, from

industrial assistant, to office computer and music and video player. Theactual devices for different purposes will be different, but in order to keep

the development cost and effort acceptable the platforms, processes, and

development environments should have similarities. Creation of flexible,

configurable and adaptable user-service interface is therefore essential.

Possibly, this may lead to the partitioning of the device.

The second major challenge is the efficiency of smart phone platform. The

number of needed communication interfaces is rising and the next

communication standards are extremely complicated. They will need huge

amount of capacity from modems. The application domain is not easier.

Multimedia processing with increasing accuracy and increasing effect on people will certainly stress application processing parts of smart phones both in consumer markets and in industrial markets. Multi-core platforms

are here today. Operating systems and UI service packages have appeared.The next steps are parallel computer systems and operating systems that

support them. The first steps can probably be taken by using derivatives of current technologies and approaches, but the real parallel systems and

parallel programming are already behind the corner… (ITRS 2005 edition

sees that the parallel processing will be in use 2009, concurrent software

compiler 2013 and heterogeneous parallel processing 2015.)

The success of device has been and will be dependent of the experience that

it gives to the user. Continuously rising computation performance, higher

quality featured HW (cameras, more storage capacity etc.) and more

efficient operating systems and user interfaces are the enablers to develop

interesting applications and attractively designed smart phones.

When considering the industrial case examples in Rooster project, both the

Ouman and Jaakko Pöyry cases belong to the industrial application category

while JP-Epstar case is more or less a mixture of industrial (or

infrastructure) and consumer categories.

• Ouman´s (http://www.ouman.fi) EH-60 system for private andvacation homes is an example of monitoring and controlling. The

EH-60 system emphasizes on remotely monitoring heating, door

http://www.ouman.fi/

http://www.ouman.fi/



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locks, yard lights and alarm on burglar, freezing, moisture, water

flow interruption and fire but also allows control of heating, door

locks and yard lights.

•

Jaako Pöyry´s case example deal´s with the design and maintenanceof complex industrial sites. The key issues are document viewing

and updating, but there are demanding elements related to document

finding for example. Knowing the location may set requirements

also for local communication. The amount of data sets requirements

for communication capacity and for user interfaces, especially for

display.

• JP-Epstar case aims at lowering costs for road maintenance by

providing traffic assistance information for drivers via phone. This

example has a lot of commercial potential and it is widely studied

subject also abroad. The challenges are mostly related to positioningand usability, and to concept development. Especially understanding

the costs for infrastructure is important.

Common factor for all cases is the need for a solution with a long life-

cycle. In practise, it means that the interface between application and

platform must be as high as possible and as standardised as possible.



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References

[1] Nokia press release, 26th January 2006[2] Gardner Research, 8

th March 2006. Forecast: Mobile Phone Production and

Semiconductor Market, Worldwide, 2003-2010, 1Q06 Update (Executive Summary)

[3] Nagate, K. NTT DoCoMo’s 3G services and terminal platform strategy, Presentation in

the Smart Phone Show Conference , 11-12.October, 2005.

[4] Robert Coombs. Wireless Core Roadmap, ARM Limited, 2004.

http://www.jp.arm.com/event/pdf/forum2004_07.pdf [5] Alahuhta Matti, 3G and the Mobile Internet. IDATE Conference, November 25 2004.

http://www.idate.fr/jii04/bio04/actes/NOKIA_Matti_ALAHUHTA.ppt[6] Silven, Olli, Jyrkkä Kari. Observations on Pwer-Effiency Trends in Mobile

Communication Devices. SAMOS 2005, LNCS, pp. 142-151. 2005.

[7] Pocket Guide to Processors for DSP. http://www.bdti.com/pocket/pocket.htm[8] PalmSource reveals Linux mobile phone OS plans,

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4663700447.html

[9] Sun blesses Java phone, http://www.deviceforge.com/news/NS6109398413.html

[10] International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors 2005 Edition,

http://www.itrs.net/Common/2005ITRS/Home2005.htm

http://www.jp.arm.com/event/pdf/forum2004_07.pdf

http://www.idate.fr/jii04/bio04/actes/NOKIA_Matti_ALAHUHTA.ppt

http://www.bdti.com/pocket/pocket.htm


http://www.deviceforge.com/news/NS6109398413.html



http://www.deviceforge.com/news/NS6109398413.html


http://www.bdti.com/pocket/pocket.htm

http://www.idate.fr/jii04/bio04/actes/NOKIA_Matti_ALAHUHTA.ppt

http://www.jp.arm.com/event/pdf/forum2004_07.pdf



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Appendix A

Vendor Family Data Width Clock

Speed

BDTImark

2000 [1]

BDTImem

Mark2000 [2]

Notes

ADSP-BF5xx

(Blackfin)16 bits 750 4190 [3] 72 [3]

Dual-MAC DSP with variable speed and

voltageAnalog

Devices ADSP-TS20x(TigerSHARC)

8/16/32/40 bits

600 6400 524-way VLIW with SIMD capabilities; useseDRAM

MSC71xx(SC1400)

16 bits 300 3370 67 Based on SC1400 licensable core

FreescaleMSC81xx

(SC140)16 bits 500 5610 [3] 67 [3]

Based on SC1400-compatible core; mostchips use 4 cores

LSI LogicLSI40x

(ZSP400)16/32 bits 200 940 74

Based on ZSP400 licensable core (see below)

NEC PD77050

(SPXK5)

16 bits 250 1770 65Dual-MAC DSP with variable speed and

voltage

RenesasSH772x

(SH3-DSP)16 bits 200 490 70

Hybrid DSP/microprocessor based on SH3-DSP

TMS320C55x 16 bits 300 1460 75Dual-issue, dual-MAC DSP; assembly-compatible w/ ’C54x

TMS320C64x 8/16 bits 1000 9130 53Adds quad-MAC capabilities and specializedoperations to 'C62x

TexasInstruments

TMS320C64x+ 8/16 bits 1000 10980 60Adds 8-MAC capabilities and specializedoperations to 'C64x

Licensor Family Data

Width

Clock

(MHz)

BDTImark2000

[1]

BDTImem

Mark2000 [2]

Die area

(mm²) Notes

ARM7 32 bits 145 150 57 0.28Widely licensed 32-bit microprocessor core

ARM9 32 bits 265 330 74 n/aAdds separate bus for data access,

deeper pipeline to ARM7

ARM9E 16/32 bits 265 550 72 1.7ARM9 enhanced with single-cycleMAC unit

ARM

ARM1136 16/32 bits 330 1160 72 2.9Adds SIMD, load/store unit, branch

prediction, deeper pipeline

CEVACEVA-X1620

8/16 bits 330 2660 67 2.6 8-way VLIW, dual-MAC DSP core

ZSP540 16/32 bits 200 n/a n/a 2.7Quad-MAC, 4-way variant of the

ZSP500LSI Logic

ZSP600 16/32 bits 175 n/a n/a 3.1Quad-MAC, 6-way variant of theZSP500

PhilipsCoolFlux

DSP24 bits 175 n/a n/a 0.34

Dual-MAC core targets low-power audio applications

SC1200 16 bits 200 1580 69 1.9Dual-MAC, 4-issue variant of theSC1400

StarCore

SC1400 16 bits 185 2080 67 2.3Synthesizable version of quad-MAC, 6-issue SC140

TensilicaXtensa LX/Vectra LX

18 bits 210 3490 69 3.7VLIW-based customizable core; withoptional DSP features



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[1] The BDTImark2000 provides summary measures of DSP speed, higher is faster

[2] The BDTImemMark provides a summary measure of memory use in signal processing applications; higher is

better.

[3] Score for one core. Some family members contain multiple cores.

smartphone roadmap final

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