Infineon announced the availability of its new generation 3G platform family. This new platform family addresses all major 3G market segments and includes a high performance HSPA modem solution, a feature phone solution enriched with high multimedia capabilities and a cost-efficient 3G solution.

This platform family reduces the number of devices in the chipset from three to two and the component count of a typical platform by 50 per cent. The solutions are based on new members of the X-GOLD 61x-series and Infineon’s 3G Radio Frequency (RF) transceiver device, the SMARTi UE. The X-GOLD 61x-series are monolithically integrated, low power 65nm baseband devices that include all digital, analog and power management functions.

Infineon’s scalable baseband architecture based on ARM11, initially introduced at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with 2G-devices (X-GOLD 113, X-GOLD213) is now extended to cover the 3G-segment.

The new 3G-solutions offer the industry’s smallest PCB (printed circuit board) footprint with a space reduction of up to 40 per cent. Furthermore the standby power is reduced by up to 30 per cent compared to existing HSDPA platform solutions.

“Our new platforms enable our customers to fully reuse their hardware and software developments and launch multiple phones covering all feature phone market segments with lower cost and faster time-to-market,” said Prof. Dr. Hermann Eul, Executive Vice President of the Infineon Management Board and President of the Communication Solutions Business Group.

“Given the compelling size of our new Baseband and RF devices and the low component count of our platforms, we are offering the world’s smallest platform footprint, enabling manufacturers to build slim, feature rich HSUPA / HSDPA phones for all 3G market segments.”

Infineon uses its own dual-mode 3GPP release 6 Protocol Stack, which enables the company to provide complete in-house system solutions.

The high performance platform XMM 6180 with the X-GOLD 618 baseband offers HSDPA/HSUPA capabilities of 7.2Mbps/2.9Mbps, an integrated high-end video accelerator for recording and playback of VGA video content and the ability to connect to cameras with up to 5 MPixels.

The cost-efficient 3G feature phone platform XMM 6170 with the X-GOLD 617 baseband supports HSDPA 3.6Mbps, recording and playback functionality of QVGA video content and the ability to connect to cameras with 2 MPixels.

The modem platform solution XMM 6160 with the X-GOLD 616 baseband offers HSDPA/HSUPA capabilities of 7.2Mbps/5.8 Mbps and includes hardware and software interfaces to an application processor or a PC as wireless modem.

All Baseband chips are manufactured in 65nm and packaged with Infineon-pioneered eWLB package technology, resulting in a dimension of 8×8x0.8 mm, which are also pin compatible across all platforms. Additionally, Infineon includes its next generation multi-band RF transceiver chip, SMARTi UE, into all its dual-mode platforms supporting three and four frequency bands for WCDMA and EDGE standards, respectively.

Verified samples and evaluation boards are available by end of June. Volume production starts in the second half of 2009.