NEC Electronics introduced the M2 system LSI chip that integrates 3.5G W-CDMA and HSDPA communications technologies with advanced low power technologies optimized for mobile handsets.

The chip utilizes a 3.5G digital baseband (DBB) technology developed by Adcore-Tech, the mobile communications joint venture established in August 2006. The M2 chip is part of NEC Electronics’ Medity series of mobile handset solutions, and is the successor to the “M1″ chip introduced in September 2006, with its 700-hour standby time.

While the M1 was based on the ARM926EJ-S CPU core, the M2 chip utilizes the more advanced ARM1176JZF-S core. The power consumption was reduced by 50 percent. This improvement was made possible by a host of advancements in circuit design and layout, including dynamic frequency scaling, automatic hierarchical clock control, LCD Direct Path technology, on-chip power switch technology, Quick Recovery technology. In addition, the use of 65-nanometer process technologies such as Multi-Vt transistor technology, and back-bias technique also contributed to lower power consumption. NEC Electronics also utilized LongRun2 technology licensed from Transmeta. The advancements in power consumption technology also contribute to minimizing the size of the mobile handset battery itself, leading to flexibility in designing slimmer handsets, and also reducing environmental impact.

In addition to the improvements in power consumption, the M2 helps reduce total bill of materials (BOM) parts by reducing the number of external parts, by sharing the external memory used by the application processor and the DBB. M2 is also based on NEC Electronics’ platformOViA to facilitate efficient software development.

Samples of the M2 chip are available now priced at US$45. Volume production is scheduled to begin in October 2007, and reach approximately 1 million units per month by 2008.