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Monday, September 26, 2011

Broadcom Introduces First NFC Chips in 40nm

Aims to Drive Next Generation of Mobile Payments and Connectivity to Bluetooth and WiFi
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

Broadcom has launched a new family of NFC chips designed to drive the mass deployment of NFC in consumer electronics devices, based on a leading edge 40nm process. 
By using the latest process technology Broadcom cut power consumption by more than 90 percent, used 40 percent fewer components and has a 40 percent smaller board area for the BCM2079x family, making it the smallest and most power efficient NFC solution on the market. The NFC controllers are platform agnostic with support for multiple secure elements or SIM cards — or both at the same time. In addition, Broadcom's Maestro middleware allows new NFC applications to use Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities in a phone.
An accelerated adoption of NFC could transform the use of smartphones, advancing beyond contactless mobile payments and ticketing to enable radically simplified connectivity between the handset and other devices like Bluetooth headsets and Wi-Fi-enabled digital televisions. The proliferation of NFC has the ability to expand the usefulness of smartphones and inspire a range of new applications built on the ability to create simple, secure connections between devices and enable services with a touch of the phone.
The family also includes support for field power harvesting allows the chip to draw energy from the environment so it can support transactions even if the phone battery has expired.
"Broadcom is committed to making NFC as ubiquitous as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are today," said Craig Ochikubo, VP and GM, Wireless Personal Area Networks at Broadcom. "These solutions provide the features and performance that enable disruptive innovation that will reshape the mobile consumer experience. Our leadership and proficiency in wireless connectivity influenced the architecture of these new chips to meet the performance required by OEMs, allowing them to more easily add NFC to their designs."

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