LTE rollout will be faster than expected

SANTA CLARA: The global rollout of Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile networks will be faster than predicted, according to chip manufacturers at the Common Platform Technology Forum.

While some analysts are predicting a standards battle between WiMax as the next purported 4G standard, chip manufacturers are solidly behind LTE. There was no mention of WiMax in the opening keynotes of today's conference.

"Many analysts predict an LTE inflection point in 2014," said David Steel, executive vice president of strategic planning at Samsung.

"But I think it could well be earlier than that. I suspect that 4G data speeds will prove that LTE will be significant very early on."

Key to the success of the platform is global standards and the ability to add them to a processor die.

Jim Thompson, senior vice president of engineering at Qualcomm, said that the company is planning a series of chip advances, the first of which is a combination 3G/4G LTE chipset.

The MSM 8960 3G/4G LTE integrated chipset is built around 20nm transistor technology, and provides five times the speed, a 75 per cent reduction in power and quadruple the graphics performance of today's chips, Thompson explained.

"In a few years LTE networks will deploy widely and people will be really surprised at how fast it is going to grow," he said.

However, there are technical hurdles in the way, chiefly power and heat. There is no way to add a cooling system to a commercial smartphone, and modern systems are more demanding and have more powerful processors.