Last month we got a chance to chat with Louis Tannyeres (pictured above), Chief Chip Architect at ST-Ericsson. We discussed how almost no one knows about ST-Ericsson, the rise of Qualcomm, how Texas Instruments does business, ST-Ericsson’s relationship to Nokia, Windows Phone, and more. Check out our full interview below:
Thanks for taking the time for an interview, Louis. Your bio on ST-Ericsson’s site says you joined the company in June 2010, and that you’ve had an extensive career at Texas Instruments (TI) where you fathered the OMAP family. Tell me, what’s it like working for ST-Ericsson compared to TI?
Texas Instruments is long established and recognized company, working in a variety of business segments with almost 30,000 employees. In contrast, ST-Ericsson is young company focused exclusively on the wireless market and with about 6,700 employees world-wide. We have a lot of technology and competence in wireless and are transforming our portfolio to become one of the world leaders in smartphones and tablets. It is challenging but also an exciting situation, with an amazing business potential.
Carlo Bozotti, the Chief Executive Officer of STMicroelectronics, said in an interview that Nokia plans on using the U8500 at some point in the future to build a Windows Phone. How long has ST-Ericsson had a relationship with Nokia and are you excited to see Microsoft selecting ST-Ericsson as a preferred chip partner whereas before if you wanted to build a Windows Phone you had to go with Qualcomm?
The NovaThor U85xx family will definitely support Window Phone as will all of our future wireless platforms. Through our parent companies, STMicroelectronics and Ericsson, we have a long established relationship with Nokia going back for more than 15 years. For example, when Nokia announced its new strategy to adopt Windows Phone operating system, Jo Harlow, it’s newly appointed head of the Smartphone division called ST-Ericsson both a “strategic partner” and a “key supplier” for Nokia.
Speaking about Qualcomm, in a Business Week article published in late March, they said that 60% of all smartphones running Android use Qualcomm silicon. What do you attribute to Qualcomm’s success in that space and what is ST-Ericsson doing to increase their share of the Android smartphone market?
ST-Ericsson platforms are designed to support all major operating systems including Android. Our complete platforms such as our NovaThor U8500, NovaThor U9500 and NovaThor U4500 offer our customers a range of highly competitive solutions supporting the Android operating system. By the way, Snowball, our recently announced MEMS-enriched developer board and probably the most advanced developer board available today also supports Android. I am confident that this feature-rich board will boost innovation in the Android developer ecosystem.
[Editor’s Note: Way to dodge the question!]
As a brand, ST-Ericsson doesn’t have the same type of recognition that Texas Instruments or NVIDIA does at the moment, why do you suppose that is and do you plan on doing anything to fix that? What devices out on the market right now use ST-Ericsson that we may not be aware of?
ST-Ericsson was only established in February 2009 and our new products will be progressively available in devices in 2011. ST-Ericsson launched already the world’s fastest 21 megabits per second (Mbps) modem for the US market and which you can find in phones such as the T-Mobile/Samsung Galaxy 4G, T-Mobile/Samsung Sidekick 4G and AT&T/Samsung Infuse 4G. Independent tests in the US have shown that these phones, powered by our modems outperform all other comparable phones. I would say that in terms of speed we are probably best in class in the 21 megabits per second (Mbps) segment.
Speaking about NVIDIA, they’ve made some serious headway into the mobile space recently, and with their purchase of Icera they’re showing that they want to make mobile chips responsible for a large portion of their income. What do you think about NVIDIA’s recent entry into the field and what strengths and weakness do you see them having with their relative amateur status?
The continuing industry consolidation validates our strategy and confirms the importance to offer integrated complete platforms to customers, including in-house developed modems and application processors that are cost, power and sized-optimized. So, it is not sufficient to have the individual components, you also need experience and know-how to integrate them in a optimized solution, creating value for customers and consumers, which is something that we have been doing for a number of years.
iFixit, a website that’s dedicated to taking apart the latest gadgets to hit the market, recently took apart a Samsung Vibrant 4G, better known in Europe as the Samsung Galaxy S, and discovered that the ST-Ericsson Thor M5730 is to thank for giving it 21 Mbps HSPA+ access. How important do you see HSPA+ becoming as more and more operators migrate their existing HSPA networks to HSPA+ and when do you think, realistically, we’ll be able to purchase a smartphone with a 42 Mbps HSPA+ capable modem inside?
I believe that a 21 megabits per second (Mbps) solution is mandatory for the high-end US market. More and more European operators are also actively looking into it as well. ST-Ericsson’s customers have already launched three models on the US market with our 21 megabits per second (Mbps) solution and other models will come in the coming months. I expect the 42 megabits per second (Mbps) solution and LTE to arrive roughly at the same time, in mid-2012, with LTE and 84 megabits per second (Mbps) in the high-end market and 42 megabits per second (Mbps) in the mid-end market.
Apple now designs their own processor, and I’m sure you’ve done research on both the A4 and A5. Have you seen the news that LG recently licensed ARM’s Cortex A9, A15, and Mali-T604 GPU? What do you think of the announcement and do you think that there’s a trend happening with handset vendors who ship devices in volume opting to build their own processors?
The recent trend in the wireless industry has clearly been towards transfer of platform development from the handset makers to platform companies such as ST-Ericsson. Companies like ourself, that master all the parts of the mobile platform can build complete, optimized systems integrating application processors, modems and connectivity. These integrated solutions can then be sold to the whole market, rather than sold to limited individual customers. Handset vendors also want to focus on what really differentiates them in the consumers’ eyes – things like design and user experience.
Speaking about ARM’s Cortex A15, what excites you the most about that processor? How does it compare to today’s generation of A9 powered chips? When do you think we’ll see a smartphone out on the market with an A15 inside?
It is indeed exciting to use such a powerful CPU, and to couple it with the latest innovations in graphics such as Imagination Rogue. The Nova A9600 application processor that we announced in February this year will feature a dual-cortex A15 running at 2.5Ghz and will be about 4-times more powerful in terms of CPU than our current already powerful NovaThor U8500 platform. I expect to see it in handsets by the end next year or early 2013.
What does Microsoft’s announcement that the next version of Windows will run on ARM chips mean for ST-Ericsson? What do you think Windows on ARM will do for the market in terms of what typs of form factors do you see being introduced, what new price points do you see being set, and what kind of excitement are we expected to see from consumers?
This provides new opportunities to address a larger market, including both PCs and tablets.
ARM cores have one of the lowest power consumption in the market and hence will give consumers a entirely new mobility experience.
And finally, the question we have to ask everyone we interview, what handset or handsets do you use right now, what have you used in the past, and what are you most looking forward to using in the future?
I test many new handset models, running on all different operating systems and chipsets. I am looking forward to getting commercial models using our NovaThor U8500 which should be available in the second half of this year. For the future, I am eagerly awaiting for our new NovaThor dual-core Cortex A9 platform running at 1.85 GHz. The exciting thing here is that it will have a LTE multi-modem inside, our Thor M7400, covering all modem access technologies from 2G/EDGE, HSPA, HSPA+ and LTE up to 100 megabits per second (Mbps).