Altair Semiconductor, developer of ultra-low power, small footprint and high performance 4G LTE chipsets, has announced the “sampling” of its new, low power consumption chipsets for the Internet of Things (IoT) sector.
The company expects that this product will catalyze billions of dollars in spending by the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and IoT industry. Top-tier carriers, device makers and module vendors have shifted gears in recent months in preparation for an aggressive introduction of numerous “smart” IoT applications once these LTE Category-1 (CAT-1) and Category-0 (CAT-0) chipsets become available.
Explaining further, the Israeli company said CAT-1 and CAT-0 were lower speed and power versions of the LTE standard which will dramatically extend the addressable market for carriers and chip makers alike.
“While chipsets supporting these lower categories are essential for numerous applications, including wearable devices, smart home and smart metering, there has been an industry development gap that we had anticipated two years ago,” said Eran Eshed, Co-Founder and Vice President of Marketing and Business Development at Altair. “We’ve worked hard to address this gap by being first to market with true CAT-1 and 0 chipsets featuring a power/size/cost combination that is a massive game-changer.”
Key features and benefits of the new chipsets include:
- Extremely low power consumption enabling between weeks and years of operation, based on the use case scenario
- Highly integrated chipset with embedded power management and direct battery connection
- Embedded MCU subsystem with virtualised, customisable application layer and a robust security framework
- Rich set of host, peripheral and sensor interfaces typical to IoT and M2M applications
- Supports VoLTE, OTDOA positioning and seamless integration with industry standard GPS and A-GNSS chipsets
- SDR-based, software upgradeable to support 3GPP Release 12 and 13 features
- Miniature footprint, available in both BGA package and as bumped dies
Altair has created disruption in the past by being the first company to launch and deploy a low-cost single mode LTE chipset in the market, and enabling device makers to offer LTE-powered products at a significant discount over multimode (3G/LTE) devices. Altair has shipped millions of chipsets to date, deployed commercially on carrier networks such as Verizon Wireless, Softbank, China Mobile and Megafone.
Image Credit: Altair
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