Fujitsu Microelectronics America officially made its long-awaited entry into the WiMAX semiconductor market late last week at the Broadband Wireless World show in Las Vegas, just a few days after Intel made its own WiMAX splash with the introduction of its new Rosedale chip half a world away at similar event in London (see story, page 16). Like Intel, Fujitsu announced a system-on-a-chip, or SOC, addressing both the physical, or PHY, and media access control layers for both base stations and subscriber stations. Fujitsu, however, argued that it has a more highly integrated chip.

“It's the most integrated, modular, scalable and cost-efficient solution,” said Keith Horn, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Fujitsu Microelectronics America, regarding the MB87M3400.

The early reviews of show attendees seemed to bear out Horn's claims. An employee of another semiconductor company called the Fujitsu chip “more integrated and more of an actual system-on-a-chip than Intel's.” Also, one wireless ISP executive at the show who used to work for an equipment vendor said he was impressed by the chip's dual RISC processors and power management capabilities.

Broadband wireless access system vendor Aperto Networks said last week that it is using both the Intel and Fujitsu chips — the Intel chip in consumer subscriber units and the Fujitsu chip in its base stations. Aperto has been working with engineering samples of the chip since earlier this year and has had an emulation platform and reference design in its possession for several months in order to use the chip in equipment it has awaiting WiMAX certification this summer, said Reza Ahy, Aperto CEO.

The Fujitsu chip is compliant with the 802.16-2004 fixed WiMAX standard, but George Wu, director of marketing for the technology solutions group for Fujitsu, said the company has a product road map for a version supporting “partial portability” around the end of 2005, before releasing a chip with full 802.16e Mobile WiMAX compliance in late 2006.

Horn, who delivered the keynote address on the opening day of Broadband Wireless World, also said that by 2010, multi-band, multi-mode handsets supporting protocols such as 3G, WiMAX and Wi-Fi will become the norm.

“Convergence and co-existence of various technologies is something that our customers are interested in. That's why they don't just want a component but a system that will support this,” he said.

The Fujitsu SOC has an OFDM PHY that supports time division duplexing and frequency division duplexing in both licensed and license-exempt frequencies. It supports channel sizes ranging from 1.75 MHz to 20 MHz, with a potential data rate of up to about 75 Mb/s.

The SOC architecture also includes an external processor interface that allows companies to dynamically configure the chip for either a base station or a subscriber unit.

Fujitsu worked closely with Wi-LAN, another access system vendor, to develop its SOC architecture. John Seliga, vice president of marketing for Wi-LAN, said the companies have been cooperating on development since 2002.