Broadcom begins layoffs of its LTE team

Post Japan based Renesas Electronics aquisition, the hatchet is on its own LTE design teams across the globe. The layoff started last week in San Diego, as well as in New Jersey, Colorado and India, sources say.

The figure could go substantially higher because the company expects to cut roughly $45 million in operating expenses relating to the deal between now and the next 12 months.

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Broadcom buys femtocell chip maker

Femtocells are small, low power cellular base stations that extend coverage indoors where signals are weak. Broadcom Corp. has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Percello Ltd., a privately-held company that develops system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions for femtocells, for $86 million in cash.

Broadcom's smartphone on a chip

Broadcom recently announced a single-chip HSUPA baseband processor that integrates key 3G mobile technologies and will improve smartphone performance and features. It also added that the processor is the first to combine high-speed upstream package applications with 3G connectivity and built-in graphics processing. Built with an integrated ARM11 core and capable of running Google's Android and Microsoft Windows Mobile, the BCM21553 baseband chip could pave the way for cheaper but much more sophisticated handsets. Other features include 5.8Mbps upstream and 7.2Mbps downstream bandwidth.

Mobile TV heats up with Broadcom's 65-nm SOC

The official news is out!
Broadcom has just announced a monolithic digital CMOS mobile TV receiver/demodulator, that reduces power consumption by up to 40 percent and physical dimensions by up to 30 percent from current handset design budgets. Designed for global digital TV reception on portable devices, the BCM2940 chip supports VHF III, UHF IV and V bands. It also supports the EU/US L-bands and integrates a 4-Mb MPE-FEC SRAM to handle DVB-H parallel/consecutive streams and services. The chip offers various physical interfaces including SPI, SDIO and USB 2.0.

Ok that sound great and appetizing, but is there a Market really?
Sometime ago TI came up with its own single-chip DVB-H receiver, called the Hollywood using a 90-nm technology, but the company hasn't announced any major design wins.
ST put its project on the back burner more than a year ago.
Now noise from NXP or Infineon!!!!!!!

Infineon given it recent track record and recent aquisitions i would not be surprised if they throw one in pretty soon :-) it is more a speculation than prediction.
Lets wait and watch and do Read on... this article on EE Times..

Broadcom Bangalore - Interview Questions

1. The new vice president of your company has set up a contest for ideas to reduce leakage power in the next generation of chips that the company fabricates. The prize for the person who submits the suggestion that makes the best tradeoff between leakage power and other design goals is to have a door installed on their cube. What is your door-winning idea, and what tradeoffs will your idea require in order to achieve the reduction in leakage power?
2. You're on the functional validation team for a chip that will control a simple portable CD-player. Your task is to create a plan for the functional validation for the signals in the entity cd digital. You've been told that the player behaves "just like all of the other CD players out there". If your test plan requires knowledge about any potential non-standard features or behaviour, you'll need to document your assumptions.
• Display Show following: 2 digit Track #, 2 digit Minutes & 2 digit Seconds
• Buttons Available: Prev, Stop, Play&Pause, Next, Pwr
• 
  

  entity cd_digital is
  port (
  -- buttons
  prev,
  stop,
  play&pause,
  next,
  pwr : in std_logic;
  -- detect if player door is open
  open : in std_logic;
  -- output display information
  track : out std_logic_vector(3 downto 0);
  min : out unsigned(6 downto 0);
  sec : out unsigned(5 downto 0)
  );
  end cd_digital;

1. Describe five tests that you would run as soon as the VHDL code is simulatable. For each test: describe what your specification, stimulus, and check. Summarize the why your collection of tests should be the first tests that are run.
2. Describe five corner-cases or boundary conditions, and explain the role of corner cases and boundary conditions in functional validation.

Possible Solutions in order:

1. Increase transistor size so as to increase threshold voltage. This will require an increase in supply voltage, which will likely increase total power.
• Alternative: When increasing transistor size, keep the supply voltage the same, but decrease performance.
• Alternative: Change fabrication process and materials to reduce leakage current. This will likely be expensive.
• Alternative: Use dual-Vt fabrication process.
2. There can be many possible solutions but the best ones are what the interviewer is looking for.
• The possible Tests:
1. Test 1:
• Specification: when power is turned on, the display will show the number of tracks on the CD, and the minutes and seconds will show the total length of the CD
• Stimulus: power='0'; wait; power='1', all other signals are '0'.
• check: display outputs of circuit match specification
2. Test 2:
• Specification: when power is on, play starts CD playing, display for track=1, min and sec show remaining time for song and start decrementing.
• Stimulus: power='1'; play='0'; wait; play='1', all other signals are '0'.
• Check: display outputs of circuit match specification
3. Test 3:
   
• Specification: when power is on and CD is playing, next starts next song. Display for track increments, min and sec show remaining time for next song and start decrementing.
• Stimulus: power='1'; play='0'; next='0'; wait; play='1'; wait; next='1', all other signals are '0'.
• Check: display outputs of circuit match specification
4. Test 4:
   
• Specification: when power is on and CD is playing, prev starts previous song. Display for track decrements, min and sec show remaining time for previous song and start decrementing.
• Stimulus: power='1'; play='0'; prev='0'; wait; play='1'; wait; prev='1', all other signals are '0'.
• Check: display outputs of circuit match specification
5. Test 5:
• Specification: when power is on and CD is playing, stop causes CD to stop.
• Stimulus: power='1'; play='0'; stop='0'; wait; play='1'; wait; stop='1', all other signals are '0'.
• Check: display outputs of circuit match specification

Now one last hurdle! Can you justify all the solutions above?

Difficulty: Medium