{"id":643240,"date":"2013-02-20T20:58:32","date_gmt":"2013-02-21T01:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=612527"},"modified":"2013-02-20T20:58:32","modified_gmt":"2013-02-21T01:58:32","slug":"the-lte-advanced-silicon-keeps-coming-altair-has-a-new-super-chip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/643240","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cLTE-Advanced\u201d silicon keeps coming: Altair has a new super-chip"},"content":{"rendered":"

Altair Semiconductor is the latest silicon company to lay claim to an LTE-Advanced chip. In preparation for Mobile World Congress next week in Barcelona, the Israeli vendor on Wednesday announced its latest-generation LTE silicon<\/a> for USB dongles, mobile hotspots, smartphones and, eventually, gadgets in the internet of things<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As I wrote earlier this week, LTE-Advanced is a much-abused term<\/a>, used increasingly throughout the industry to make LTE products seem much more significant than they actually are. Carriers and vendors have latched onto a single technique in LTE-Advanced standard to justify their use of the moniker.<\/p>\n

Altair is no exception, though to be fair its new super-chips are more advanced that others. It\u2019s incorporated into its designs two techniques from the LTE-Advanced standard: carrier aggregation<\/a>, which bonds together disparate swathes of spectrum into one big super-carrier, and enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC), which will allow small cells and big macrocells to coexist<\/a> in the same airwaves.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, Altair co-founder and marketing VP Eran Eshed said that whatever LTE-Advanced techniques its chips don\u2019t support today will be supported in the future through software upgrades. \u201cIn contrast to competitive solutions,\u00a0Altair\u2019s solution is based on a very advanced and powerful SDR (Software Defined Radio) architecture which means that we have the ability to deploy a chipset and upgrade its features as standards evolve,\u201d Eshed told me via email.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most notable detail in Altair\u2019s new chip specs, though, is its use of envelope tracking. It\u2019s an obscure little technology being developed by companies like Nujira<\/a> and Quantance<\/a>, but envelope tracking has the potential to significantly boost 4G-device battery life by tempering LTE\u2019s innate power hunger<\/a>. Eshed wouldn\u2019t tell me whose envelope tracking technology Altair is using, but this is the first implementation of the technology I\u2019ve seen in a chipset.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock<\/a> user alphaspirit<\/em><\/p>\n

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