MARCH 2001 BROADSHEET - Developments in Bluetooth and Short Distance Wireless Connectivity
At the end of January everybody was telling us that the subject scheduled for our February meeting was so over-exposed with all the other networking groups that we would have to try something else if we wanted people to come. But we stuck to our guns and found that Bluetooth was such a revolutionary concept that it could sustain endless discussion even to the extent of giving us the biggest audience we've ever had!
Matthew Phillips, Marketing Manager of Cambridge Silicon Radio, gave us some ancient history about the Danish 10th Century King Harald who had a propensity for blueberries and succeeded in uniting the warring tribes of the time by cunning negotiation rather than the customary method of fire and sword. Hence Bluetooth for smart communication using minute tranceivers instead of the usual tangle of trailing leads. The concept was trail blazed by mobile giant Ericcson, who brought in Nokia, IBM, Toshiba, and Intel to a Bluetooth Special Interest Group. CSR derives out of Cambridge Consultants who were already dabbling in CMOS radio chips in 1990 and were in a good position to 'qualify' for the Bluetooth standard very early on. Now they are getting close to the $5 target for producing tranceiver chips for a multitude of applications from mobiles, palmtop organizers, cordless headsets, central heating, MP3 players, TV's, trainers and body health monitors. Lots of stuff on www.csr.com, or direct to matthew.phillips@csr.com .
Jeremy Hendy, Strategic Technology Director of Tality Corporation (previously Simbionics) confirmed that CSR was leading the field by producing Bluetooth 'qualified' chips, which could be designed into a multitude of applications. This gave a head start enabling new ideas to reach the market in 12 to 15 months. Tality had concentrated on ceramic aerials, smart batteries and software enabling up to ten networks to operate simultaneously in a limited space. He reiterated that there was a huge concentration of this latest technology in Cambridge which was world renowned. Jeremy can be contacted on jph1@cadence.com and their web site is www.tality.com
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