SiRF’s Next-generation GPS Technology Brings Benefits of Location Awareness to More Consumer Platforms and Users

SiRF Technology, Inc. today announced two new global positioning system chip set families that deliver such high levels of performance, power savings, cost effectiveness and system integration that the world’s largest consumer electronics manufacturers are using them to enable a new range of innovative wireless, consumer electronic, automotive and mobile computing products. These new products, in combination with today’s announcements of relationships with Motorola and Matsushita Electric Works extend SiRF’s lead in the GPS chip set and IP licensing market.

The two new product families are designed to address the emerging needs of the consumer GPS market: lower power for longer battery life, lower cost to accelerate mainstream consumer acceptance, and smaller size to enable a compact new class of handheld and wearable devices. The new products include the SiRFstarIIe/LP and the SiRFstarIIt families. With its dramatic power efficiency, high sensitivity and modular design, the SiRFstarIIe/LP delivers longer battery life and faster integration of GPS location technology into consumer devices such SiRF’s Next-generation GPS Technology Brings Location Awareness to More Consumers as cell phones and mobile computer accessories.

The SiRFstarIIt family is designed for low power and lower system cost implementations of GPS in automobile navigation and mobile compute system motherboards by using an innovative new architecture that shares system resources to reduce the incremental cost of the GPS function.

Our vision is to drive GPS further into the mainstream. These new low-power product families enable our OEM partners to develop market leading products that meet a broad range of price, performance and functionality needs of consumers, according to Kanwar Chadha, founder and vice president of marketing for SiRF Technology. With these new options, manufacturers have a choice. If the desired consumer platform already possesses a powerful microprocessor, they can use our new SiRFstarIIt to reduce system cost by sharing host resources. If not, the new SiRFstar IIe/LP delivers all the horsepower needed for GPS and other functions to enable them to run non-GPS applications in parallel – representing a major space and money saver.

SiRFstarIIe/LP: optimized for wireless handhelds and modular GPS designs An extension to the highly popular SiRFstarIIe chip set, the new SiRFstarIIe/LP chip set combines the industry’s highest GPS performance with extremely low power consumption and higher CPU throughput. The current draw is only 60mA, which directly translates to longer battery life – a critical requirement in portable devices such as cellular phones, personal locators and handheld devices. SiRF’s TricklePower advanced power management technology reduces power consumption still further.

With an embedded ARM7TDMI microprocessor, the SiRFstarIIe/LP features 55% more CPU throughput than its predecessor, in many cases eliminating the need for a separate processor to run non-GPS tasks, and thus dramatically reducing costs for many GPS consumer products. As a highly integrated and self contained chip set, the SiRFstarIIe/LP is also well suited for use in stand-alone GPS modules and subsystems. The SiRFstarIIe/LP is fully compatible with SiRFLoc high sensitivity technology, which provides autonomous and network aided GPS functionality in areas where traditional GPS will not work, such as urban canyons, tunnels and even some indoor locations.

SiRFLoc is designed to meet the coverage and accuracy requirements of both the FCC’s E-911 mandate as well as the emerging location based services market. SiRF’s Next-generation GPS Technology Brings Location Awareness to More Consumers Page 3 more SiRFstarIIt: reducing cost by putting GPS on the motherboard The SiRFstarIIt chip set is architected to deliver lower power, smaller size and lower system cost by integrating the GPS function directly onto the system motherboard. A further step in SiRF’s vision of integrating GPS functionality more tightly and economically into highvolume products, SiRFstarIIt consists of the GSP2t GPS tracker chip which calculates GPS measurements; and SiRFNav software, which runs on the host system and calculates a final navigation and position data. This allows sharing of host system processing and memory resources, thereby delivering far lower system cost and smaller size. This is an extremely costeffective solution for applications that use GPS as part of a multifunction system such as vehicle navigation applications or motherboard mobile computing applications.

As mobile computing platforms are adopted by enterprise users, interest in location technologies is growing, according to Gerry Purdy, CEO and president of Mobile Insights. SiRF’s new products provide PDA manufacturers with a low-cost, low-power option either as a peripheral or integrated directly onto the motherboard. New technology already being adopted The two new technologies are already being adopted by leading manufacturers including Matsushita Electric Works, Lowrance, Navman, Leadtek, Royaltek and others.

SiRF is now the worldwide leader in GPS chip set volume, having overtaken the incumbents in five years’ time, according to Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts. I attribute this success to the company’s ability to listen to manufacturers’ needs, and then meet them by providing multiple product families to meet the diverse range of market needs – with continual innovation in critical areas such as smaller form factors, lower power consumption, and high performance and accuracy.

Based on SiRFstarII architecture Both products are based on the SiRFstarII architecture, providing the high performance GPS common to all SiRFstarII receivers. At the core of the SiRFstarII is the Satellite Signal Tracking Engine, a patented GPS engine that integrates key functionality into a tight architecture. This design enables the SiRFstarII’s unique set of features including SnapStart for quick start-up, SnapLock for fast acquisition, and FoliageLock for high sensitivity. SiRFstarII also features a built-in Wide Area Augmentation System capability for SiRF’s Next-generation GPS Technology Brings Location Awareness to More Consumers enhanced accuracy, advanced multi-path rejection for better accuracy in harsh environments, and TricklePower advanced power management for extended battery life.

Both the SiRFstarIIe/LP and the SiRFstarIIt families consist of RF IC, baseband IC and software. Both the baseband ICs, GSP2e/LP and GSP2t are built using 0.18 micron CMOS processes for low power. The RF IC GRF2i/LP utilizes a low power bipolar process technology. For more information, on the latest GPS News see portable gps.

Author Notes:

Marcell Novak contributes and publishes news editorial to http://www.handheld-gps-reviews.com.  A wealth of information about Global Positioning Systems for commercial or personal use.